


appendages

by autisticandrewminyard (transtwinyards)



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mob, Butcher!Neil, Character Death, Gen, I'll tag as I go, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Other, POV Multiple, Raven!Neil, Trans Male Character, [look at all these chickens kid voice] look at all these friendships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-08 02:35:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 37,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11072286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transtwinyards/pseuds/autisticandrewminyard
Summary: nounap·pend·age \ə-ˈpen-dij\1:  an adjunct to something larger or more important :  appurtenance2:  a usually projecting part of an animal or plant body that is typically smaller and of less functional importance than the main part to which it is attached; especially :  a limb or analogous part (such as a seta)3 [appendant]:  a dependent or subordinate personNathaniel Wesninski grapples with his life as the heir to a criminal empire, as the vice captain to the Edgar Allan Ravens, and as the person he wants to be seen as.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> to those who didn't know, this is b&r au. this is what the extra tag in [@aceaaroniscanon](http://aceaaroniscanon.tumblr.com) we have reserved for fun stuff, painful stuff, and sometimes, lingerie.
> 
> shout out to sam, who started this with me long ago, and to ayah, who supported this and gave me the choice "you gotta post if you reach 15k". they're the real mvps.

The scruff of shoes against AstroTurf, the hard snap of aluminum racquets hitting wood, the crack of the ball against the Plexiglas walls, and the feeling of his jersey sticking to his back while his socks stuck to his shins; these were the sounds and sensations Nathaniel came to accept as what little happiness he had left in life.

Visiting Evermore on weekends to play Exy with Kevin and Riko had been what had kept him afloat for more than ten years. An addition to this was Jean and what came to be Nathaniel’s only source of income nowadays: murder.

During the summer, the Ravens would train around young Riko, Kevin, and Jean, going so far as leaving half of the court to the budding stars. (Nathaniel suspected Tetsuji was behind it but didn’t mention it.)

Nathaniel, home-schooled, would find time to visit and play matches for as long as physically possible, give them company as much as he could. Kevin would be cautious of him, a recent development due to Nathaniel’s new occupation, never mind that he was a solid foot taller. Jean would attach himself to Nathaniel’s hip because Riko couldn’t touch him there. Riko, on the other hand, would be completely beside himself trying to exclude Nathaniel as much as possible, to the point of roughing him up on court.

(That never ended well for him.)

Those days would be the happiest and sweatiest Nathaniel would be. The next few would be spent with Ichirou before both heirs were forced back into doing mule tasks and desk jobs and working the front for their fathers. Evermore was the only other location Lola and Romero had allowed him to go, apart from the Wesninski manor and the Moriyamas’ private beach house where he met up with Ichirou regularly (until Ichirou moved out and got himself his own apartment in the city, that is).

After long summers and a Christmas break that had the main branch eyeing the second branch, between all the gun powder and starched suits, all the glitz and glam of the underworld and black market, an athletic scholarship with his childhood sport in mind was Nathaniel’s only tie to sanity left.

It was also good work out.

Evermore, known to him, Kevin, and Jean as The Nest, was at its darkest before practice began, a darkness that felt like a warm embrace as Nathaniel ran his fingers through the fake grass, trying to gather enough energy to get up and drive back to his dorm room across campus. Even on the inner court, Nathaniel could hear the entire stadium stirring to wakefulness: pipes squeaking, lockers slamming, cleats squealing against the floor.

After an anti-climactic end to a vigil, Nathaniel loved that he could just break into the court like this, that the court was easy enough to break into to begin with. The showers were available, easy to clean up in no matter what amount of blood was on his body at any given early-morning hour, and it was a safe area to store his guns since it was still technically Moriyama property. Luck would have it that the Ravens ran sixteen-hour days without him, and wouldn't catch him in the act of cleaning himself unless he timed it wrong.

The sound of a lock lifting and slamming open was loud but muffled from behind the Plexiglas. The overhead lights flickered on, tinging the backs of Nathaniel's eyelids pink. His eyes burned, more by lack of sleep than abrupt light exposure.

The court door opened.

Nathaniel was not in gear when the Ravens entered court through the away team door. Donned in a blue button up and washed out jeans, his boots were off to the side somewhere, he was a punching bag for dumber, more aggressive Exy players.

He wondered where he put his boots.

The Ravens piled in, neatly filed and compressed in three lines with Riko leading them. Riko was too busy talking to his fellow strikers to notice Nathaniel pushing himself up off the AstroTurf.

Nathaniel approached them, boots in hand from where he’d picked them up a few feet from where he was lying down. He gave a half-assed wave over to their goalies and returned respectful nods with smiles.

His eyes swept over the scene. Everyone was favoring legs, it seemed, cradling arms, lifting things with their non-dominant hands. He tried to catch a few looks from most of them and had his efforts vetoed.

So much for that.

(He missed Kevin. At the very least, Kevin would speak to him even if he wouldn’t look Nathaniel in the eye.)

“Top of the morning, everyone.” Nathaniel didn’t break his gaze until Riko noticed him. Riko’s head whipped around to look, and glared when he saw Nathaniel in casual clothes. “Morning, Riko. Early in, early out? I thought you loved the court.”

There was movement near the benches, and Nathaniel spotted Jean settling in with a few of his teammates, his helmet already on. Nathaniel was willing to bet that his face bruised and bloodied from a sleepless night.

God, what a mess. This whole team was a mess.

Riko stepped forward to block the view, which wasn’t much considering he was only an inch taller. “If you’re not playing, get off the court, Wesninski.”

Nathaniel hummed, craning his head towards the benches still. Riko sighed through his nose, evidently frustrated, but said nothing more. Nathaniel loved this too: riling Riko up after a job. It was so easy to push buttons on the guy when he so desperately needed knives pushing, instead of fingers.

“Well, I’m not staying long,” Nathaniel drawled. He could feel the tension between them increasing as the rest of his team tried their hardest to appear to not be listening. He looked Riko in the eyes when he said, “Worked a project all night. Had to be done, so I need to catch up on some sleep after I unpack. I’ll be in for practice this evening.”

Riko looked away, working his jaw. He knew that Nathaniel was intentionally sending dissent throughout his ranks, unraveling his little non-hierarchy with every nonchalant word. He wasn’t part of their little hivemind, but he was still a starting back liner and vice-captain.

He’s only been here for a year.

Nathaniel stepped back, feeling his lips stretch to a smile, but feeling the weight of satisfaction drag his bones down with exhaustion. “Jason,” he called.

One of the goalkeepers snapped to attention.

Nathaniel shook his head affectionately when Jason dropped his racquet. Jason grinned in response, but stepped over his racquet instead of picking it up.

“You and Marcus are playing referees for a round, okay? It’s Darnel versus Park, pick teams of six. I’d like a word with you, if you don’t mind.” This last one was aimed at Riko as Nathaniel purposefully grabbed himself a handful of Moriyama, grip tight enough to bruise Riko’s fair skin.

It didn’t really matter if Riko minded or not. It mattered that almost half the team won’t be able to walk out of the stadium within the weekend without people getting suspicious. It mattered that Riko might have been fucked up for good when Tetsuji raised him, but adding casualties to his neuroticism was impractical for the main branch.

Together, they walked off court. He waved off any lingering teammates from their side of the bleachers. When that was all done, he took a seat and gave Riko a cold look.

Calmly, he asked, “What did I tell you about handing out penalties as torture sessions with our teammates?”

Riko pursed his lips, still unable to meet Nathaniel’s eyes. Nathaniel could empathize with that. He wouldn’t meet his eyes either, if he regularly tortured his teammates just because his chew toy rolled off to never return.

God, what a mess.

“You said to make it clean. I cleaned up after myself.”

Nathaniel scoffed but otherwise kept his voice as calm as he could, “No, Riko. Making it clean was what I told your uncle about the state of the team after Kevin left. I told  _you_  that our teammates don’t live here for the rest of their miserable lives. That’s just you, and for the added benefit, Jean. You don’t get to torture them whenever you get pissy.”

“They live here  _now_ —”

“On a five-year contract,” Nathaniel emphasized. He could feel his anger bubbling up in his throat, begging to be let out. “We recruited them for a team, not Big Brother or whatever fraternity that requires hazing. This isn’t up for debate.”

Riko closed his eyes, his nostrils flaring in anger. He kept quiet, biting the inside of his cheek. This behavior was not new or exclusive to Riko. Idly, Nathaniel wondered if it was a genetic trait or if it was the Japanese upbringing because he'd seen Ichirou do the same thing when Nathaniel couldn't help but make fun of him.

Nathaniel took a deep breath.

“What’s this really about, Riko?” He knew what it was about but he wanted to drive the nail deeper, _deeper_ into Riko’s head, like an actual nail into his skull. (Damn, that would be good.) “Is this about Kevin signing onto Palmetto State as a striker?”

Riko opened his eyes, but continued to ignore him.

He rolled his eyes.

He moved to stand, avoiding any sticky spots on the floors on the way to the locker rooms. “Let the starters out by 10, then go give your benchwarmers a go on the court. Sound practical to you? I’ll be back. Take care of your players, Riko, unless you want all of them to move to South Carolina.”

He was halfway up the bleachers before Riko spoke again.

“Stay in your lane, Wesninski. No master wants a rabid dog.”

Nathaniel paused, felt the anger in his throat simmer down his shoulders. He took a deep breath, just like his mother had taught him, and turned back around.

Riko stood far below, looking smug. Nathaniel would bet the eight-million-dollar amount on his head that this was exactly what Riko looked like in his torture sessions.

“You’re on a leash,” Riko said, because it was true. “You can joke around all you want, I can see through you. You’re mad. You want to kill me because you could. But unless someone tells you to, you’re not allowed a single hair out of place. Remember that.”

Nathaniel had to give him credit. He was smart enough to let the hired gun walk off before saying shit like that. He chuckled, reaching a hand up to brush his fingers through his hair.

“Don’t be so cocky,” he said. “You’re only on court because you’re an investment, and you’re only still alive because you’re second pickings. So, unless your brother needs replacing, you can’t risk anything past that. You already cost us Kevin and sent the media running to our court doors around the time of the month we need it for meetings, so watch your tone.”

He watched with some delight as the smirk on Riko’s face melted into a mix of pure hatred and fear. The truth always did its job better than fists.

Nathaniel turned back around to continue his trek to the away team locker room, where he’d left his things in a heap in the far corner of a cubby hole. Before he left the bleachers, he called over his shoulder, “If I find another injury on Jean later, you’re gonna get it, Riko. Remember  _that_.”

* * *

 Mary fidgeted with the signal blocker by the cup holder. She’d gotten it for cheap online and made sure to modify it to work in her favor. As she waited for her rental to tick back to life, she picked her phone up from the center console and dialed the only number she knew by heart instead of by rote.

The ticking of the engine served to calm her down, though it was peripheral to the phone ringing once, twice, thrice… What if Nathan was one step ahead of her already? What if this car passing, no, _that_ car passing by her on the road was Lola or Jackson? What if Nathan had reached Abram?

It was just a little money, she reassured herself. Just a little from Nathan’s accounts, just to ensure her that Abram was going to live a life without her. With Nathan’s treatment every night, she feared for the worst: not for him to end her, but for her to end herself.

This little money was her will to live at the moment.

She leaned over the steering wheel, contemplated how she’d ended up in this situation, and nearly laughed in relief when the call finally connected.

Fuck contemplation.

Before she could say anything, Abram beat her to it. “ _Hello?_ ”

“Abram.”

Silence. Then, “ _Mom? Your number’s a question mark. Did you get a new phone?_ ”

“Idiot,” Mary scoffed. She combed her fingers through her hair, still counting the minutes it will take for her rental to finally come back to life. “I’m on a burner _and_ a jammer. This isn’t amateur hour, brat.”

“ _Double whammy, mom_ ,” Abram muttered, sounding exhausted and masking it. Awfully. Mary looked at her watch and counted down the hours. It was around six in the morning in Maryland. This exhaustion meant Abram had been out on an assignment all night. “ _No need to insult my intelligence so early in the morning._ ”

It was a childish thing to say, and it made Mary even more irrationally melancholy for the reason.

“ _Anyway, is this blocked call connected to the reason why the Malcolm twins have been distracting me from looking for you all weekend?_ ”

For the second time in that same hour, Mary resisted the urge to panic. The engine continued to tick down its recovery seconds, and Mary continued to still be alive after the end of each second. She was alive, she was fine, she was going to live.

“You don’t need to know,” Mary replied, voice stern. Abram didn’t need to be involved in this. “What you need to know is that I never called. Okay? I never called, we’re not talking at this very second, and no one needs to know. Especially not your father.”

“ _Not a problem, mom._ ”

Mary rolled her eyes, “Tone, Abram.”

“ _What, I’m not saying anything_.”

“Just cover for me.”

There was a pause. Another car passed Mary’s rental by. She hoped that parking by an abandoned building meant she wasn’t going to be pestered by some well-meaning strangers. Or psychotic knife-wielding murderers sent by her husband.

“ _I don’t see anything to cover up, it’s just dust you left behind_.” And by dust, it meant that Mary’s disappearance was scarce but traceable. Eyewitnesses at the car rental place, some security cameras here and there that were angled so that she couldn’t hide her face.

“That’s exactly what I need you to do. Make me disappear.”

“ _Wrong thing to say to a person with my profession_.”

“Look, don’t make me drive up there, Abram, because I will, if you pull that shit on me aga-“

“ _Alright, mom, jeez,_ ” Abram interrupted, laughing a little. The ticking stopped. Mary had a few more seconds before the car could restart. She cataloged the sound of her son’s voice in her head, already expecting the worst. Any day could be her last, at this point, unless she reached the nearest international flight out of the country without alerting her husband.

“ _Okay, I’ll cover up for you. Let me see what I can do_.”

“Thanks, sweetie.”

Mary tried the keys. The engine turned, turned, turned, then caught. She didn’t catch Abram’s good luck wishes when she finally hung up.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> before the banquet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's so short!! i swear, the next chapter's better.

Jean snuck a glance over at Neil, who was currently concentrated with fidgeting with his phone.

There wasn't anything particularly interesting about Neil's profile. He was the same old Neil, with his auburn hair and tanner complexion and odd muscle structure for a back liner. He was just his plain old self.

Except the phone he was spinning by his knee was off.

Something was up, and Jean couldn’t fathom what it could possibly be without taking the time to analyze it. It could have been something Moriyama-related or Riko-related, or worse, something Wesninski-related. Either way, Jean could practically hear the cogs turning in Neil’s head from where he sat, and he couldn’t make heads or tails of the state of Neil’s thought process to know how to go about talking him out of it.

It wasn’t something he could just bring up in the middle of a conversation with Jason and Marcus either. Not when their teammates were so far from the situation.

Jean brought his attention back to aforementioned teammates.

They were talking about the upcoming banquet.

“Do you think maybe they’ll have booze there?” Jason asked, his toothy grin white and his eyes shot red from what could either be his chronic insomnia or something he snorted in the bathroom counter. He leaned heavily against Marcus’ shoulder, his limbs flailing around.

Marcus scoffed, pushing at Jason’s shoulder. “Man, I thought you were from Georgia. Don’t they always have booze in all kinds of redneck events?”

Jason punched him, lightly from what Jean could see, but Marcus still winced too hard. Jean knew for a fact that it wasn’t a practice bruise, but he also knew that only Riko’s numbered posse got the cane from the Master. Possibly, it was from sneaking into the girl’s shower room to have sex.

Jean made note of it, quickly, to accommodate for the next practice. He had to keep the whole defense line clean if Neil was this distracted.

Jason rolled his eyes when Marcus started mock-groaning in pain. “The South ain’t a whole state, you asshole. We don’t all have redneck events. Way to be state-cist.”

“That’s not a thing, stop trying to bring your whiteness into this. And you had all three proms before getting recruited.”

“Fuck you. I'm not telling you anything anymore. ‘Sides, it’s the ERC. It’s _bound_ to be vanilla.”

“Then I don’t know why you asked in the first place, man. Make up your mind.”

This was top-notch humor Neil could get behind, Jean thought, if only Neil would just stop fidgeting with his phone and paid attention.

Jean raised a hand. Both teammates ceased their yammering, their attention quickly diverted from petty fighting.

“If you both wanted alcohol at the event, why not just bring your own?”

Marcus snorted at this, and Jason let out a loud _HA_ before flopping down on the bed behind Marcus.

“Look, Frenchie,” Marcus said. “It’s not like the Coach’s gonna give us five minutes at ABC’s on the way to Blackwell. Where the hell are we going to get booze at the last minute?”

Jean saw a solution to this quick. “Nathaniel and I are driving over in his car for the event. If you have some cash on hand, maybe we could buy it for you?”

It was just one sentence, just in front of their teammates, but the taste of the fraction of a name on his tongue was wrong. He’d known Neil before some of his easily hidden scars appeared on his body.

( _Your vendetta against my father is cute_ , Neil told him, once, when they were both seventeen. Jean had him sit down on his bed and tasked himself to clean up some of Neil’s scars because most of it was in a place he couldn’t reach without straining his muscles.

With a smile that could only be read as sad, Neil said, _If only you applied it on Riko too_.)

Jason shot up, then grabbed onto Marcus for balance. They both flailed around for a second before Jason could say, “For real?”

Jean glanced over at Neil again, then nudged him by the knee.

Neil blinked, then looked at Jean.

There was a knock by the doorway.

All occupants of the room looked at the guard at the same time, which wasn’t odd at all. In the Nest, synchronicity got old fast.

(Couldn’t say the same about how the guards reacted to it though. If he were a lesser person, he'd have laughed out loud at the look of fear on the guard's face.)

Silence settled between him and the Ravens before he said something. “Mr. Wesninski, your, uh, father is here to see you.”

Jean frowned. The phrase ‘ _speak of the devil and he shall appear’_ apparently also applied to thoughts.

Neil stood up, pocketing his phone. “Thank you,” he told the guard, who ran away fast before Jean could say anything about it.

Neil turned to his teammates and said, “If you’ll excuse me.”

Jean couldn’t help it. He reached out, pulled Neil back by the wrist. Neil paused, but didn’t turn.

In French, Neil said, “It’s just a talk, Jean.”

Jean could beg to differ. The last time Neil and his father talked face to face, alone together, Neil ended up with scars and bruises far worse than Jean’s own. He didn’t want that to happen again.

The concerning thing about it was that Neil looked as if it was barely affecting him.

He replied in the same language. “It’s never just a talk with him.”

Neil did turn, then. He gave Jean one icy glance, one that portrayed full understanding of the situation and what the consequences were, one that said _your concern with me doesn’t concern me_.

Jean couldn’t help it.

Neither could Neil.

When Neil left, all the energy in the earlier conversation paled in comparison.

Anxiety proved to be quite the pain suppressor. And noise filter, but Jason and Marcus didn’t need to know that.

* * *

Nathan was sitting in the lounge on the top floor of the Nest, scrolling through his phone.

Nathaniel confidently assumed he wasn't looking at dental test records from the body or CCTV footage of him dumping the bait body, because he was trained well enough to know not to get caught. That, and, his father wasn’t the type of man to look through paperwork.

Nathaniel had de-boned and roasted that corpse he placed as his mother, made sure to throw it somewhere his father's men would look but not somewhere his father's men wouldn’t see.

In a sort of archaic-chaotic way, the child was better than the father.

"Nathan," Nathaniel greeted coldly. The door behind him shut with a clatter and a beep. He took a few strides across the room to cover the distance, but kept his father at a distance.

"Junior," Nathan said, but he wasn't looking, his posture slack and his legs crossed to show nonchalance, an aggravation tactic that worked, sure, if Nathaniel needed something from his father and was using intimidation. Technically their situations were reversed right now.

Nathaniel shut himself off from the conversation in his effort to not react to all the posturing and side-stepping that was unlike the Butcher of Baltimore. He kept his mind on how to get Nathan to believe that he had nothing to do with this.

After all, Mary was the only reason he was here.

Nathan's trip here wasn’t a worrying factor, Nathaniel thought, the plan was going accordingly. Mary was going to disappear, Nathan was going to go nuts and start looking for her, Nathaniel would inherit his little empire while Nathan went on the rampage, and he could finally end this, once and for all, once he convinced Moriyama Kengo what needed to be done.

Nathaniel ignored the way it felt like he was just saying that to reassure himself.

Nathan put his phone down, looked up at his son. His gaze. Nathaniel had seen it in the mirror many times, but he never quite got a handle on how to feel like himself while under it. "Do you know where your mother went?"

Nathaniel blinked, then averted his gaze and took a small breath, a practiced move that could make or break this situation, depending on how his father took it. He kept the urge to cross his arms under helm until he knew he had to. He willed himself to feel grief, to look aggrieved, felt tears welling a little in the corner of his eyes. Everything revolved around the off-side chance that Nathan saw his acting as genuine.

His mother was supposed to be dead and he had to act like he was still grieving.

He snapped his gaze back to Nathan, whose face was blank, let his voice wobble a little in his faux frustration, “Last I saw her was at the funeral. If I recall correctly, you weren’t there to be the one to identify her body beforehand, so I don’t know why the fuck you think coming here and accusing me of something you’re assuming I did is going to take away that fact.”

Nathan continued to stare, observing all of Nathaniel’s little twitches and hitches of breath. Hypervigilance was a happy symptom of the paranoid, a sickness most hired guns had in common. Nathaniel knew what things his father looked for in a liar, and was better at lying to save himself than identifying the lies to save himself.

Nathaniel took a deep breath and averted his gaze again. “Was that all? Give me a week or so of mourning then it’s back to antagonizing me whenever we meet in person? What’s next, you’re gonna hurt me again? I’d say this would be why the Hatfords didn’t invite you to the funeral but then I remember how much worse you did to deserve that.”

He crossed his arms.

This, finally, satisfied Nathan.

His father pocketed his phone and stood. He was a solid foot taller than his son, but Nathaniel knew that there was almost no huge significant difference between their features. Their scars were just as gruesome beneath the smart casual wear, caused to and by each other, years and years of fighting and abuse.

Nathaniel ached for the day he could finally sink the knife inside his father’s chest and _twist_ , could imagine just how loud he’d shout in agony as the knife in his flesh sent pulse after pulse of pain through his body.

The knife hidden by his side was out in a millisecond, almost reflexive, his blade pressed against Nathan’s throat, sinking just enough to cut a little at the thin skin of his father’s neck.

There was a soft _click_ , the sound of a gun’s safety coming off. Nathan grinned as he pressed the cold barrel against Nathaniel’s gut.

“If I find out that you were the one who killed her,” Nathaniel seethed, trailed off.

There were things that were conceptualized and left unsaid for a reason. The ways he could bleed Nathan out were countless, and the need for it to happen made Nathaniel shake on most nights. If Nathan had actually murdered Mary, Nathaniel didn’t know what would hold him back anymore.

Nathaniel stepped away, watching the way Nathan’s shirt soaked red, then black. He could taste the possibility of it like something stuck in the back of his throat.

Nathaniel turned, got into the elevator, and left Nathan standing in the lounge. He took a few deep breaths as he leaned on the cold metal cooling the back of his shirt, replaced his knife in its holster, and watched the floor marker go from right to left.


	3. Chapter 3

Jean was holding his hand over the table, between their plates.

Nathaniel could think of nothing weirder than fixating on that fact. It was better than thinking about how his meeting with the higher-ups was moved beforehand so that it could align perfectly with the district changes’ schedule, and how he would literally pull nails from Riko’s hands if it meant having to spend time away from the banquet.

Nathaniel looked around, trying to distract himself.

There was a kind of backwards feeling in his chest about seeing an indoor court turned into a venue for a banquet. Though he’d seen enough swanky dinners and soirees held in the Wesninski manor to last him a lifetime, the sight of a court naked from a hundred yards of AstroTurf and the Plexiglas covered up with what could possibly be a hundred more yards of white Cartolina sent Nathaniel reeling.

Honestly, it was almost barbaric.

As far as his eyes could see on their long table, the men wore suits and the women wore dresses, a sea of black-and-red that might as well have been the Ravens’ jersey uniforms. Nathaniel largely went against the black-and-red thing his teammates had going on, on the sentiment that he valued individuality and was not at all ready to be associated with these freaks.

He wore blue and gray, just to spite them.

As far as he’d known, the ERC hadn’t issued a uniform for each team in the invitations, so Riko could keep his pointed glares of disappointed to himself, thanks very much.

(What an asshole.)

The South, from the short time that the Ravens have been there, was odd, to say the least. From where the North District ran charities and fun runs for the ERC, the South insisted to go cliché Southern high school and hold banquets and dances instead.

(Nathaniel could already hear Kevin’s banter about backwater historical events that had happened in banquets once in history, or something about the importance of it in the history of the Exy. Not that Nathaniel wanted to know nor cared.)

“This is neat,” Nathaniel muttered in French. Beside him, Jean chuckled, deep and rumbling. His palm, on the back of Nathaniel’s, was sweaty.

“That’s an eloquent way of putting it.”

Nathaniel bit back a smile, feeling that it would be a bit inappropriate. He was anxious, paranoid, and hiding it.

It could have been caused by a combination of reasons.

Perhaps it was because he was anxious to see Kevin, to see who or what made him stay at and/or go to Palmetto State. Jean seemed hellbent on keeping Kevin’s reasons. Apart from the broken left hand due to Riko’s pride, all of it was classified.

Nathaniel did his research on what it could possibly be, and Andrew Minyard was looking promising, with his previous contact with Kevin and the colorful past connected to his teammates.

(Of course, since it was the Palmetto State Foxes, _everyone_ had colorful pasts. But Nathaniel wasn’t one to talk. At the very least, none of the Foxes were hired guns or mob spawns, just kids atoning for petty crimes and years of childhood psychological trauma.

Nathaniel could definitely relate.)

Perhaps, it was the orange-and-white sashes on the seats across the Ravens’ black-and-red. Not only would Nathaniel and Jean be seeing Kevin tonight, they would be seated right across from the Foxes’ whole team of ten as well.

(Nathaniel would have to keep his teammates at bay again, especially Riko.

He swore, the 16-hour days at the Nest were never good for anyone’s etiquette.)

Or perhaps, and most plausibly, it was because Nathan Wesninski had disappeared after an assignment in Boston around two weeks ago.

The Butcher was prone to binging after assignments, this Nathaniel knew from years of having to look through the Wesninski ledgers the moment his voice cracked. Nathan often spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on prostitutes and swanky five-star hotels, barring no integrity for monogamy or thriftiness.

This kind of radio silence, after two days, was suspicious and Nathaniel had every right to be on edge. No account withdrawals, not even for gas money or black market bargains. Anyone (most likely Ichirou) would tell him that he was getting too paranoid, but caution was prudent if your dad had the potential to brutally massacre you when you least expected it.

Jean squeezed his hand gently, reminding Nathaniel where he was. Jean’s thumb was running circles over the back of his hand. Nathaniel appreciated the comfort, and hoped Jean was at the very least comforted by the thought that the Foxes would be seated across from them. He knew Jean’s main concern at the moment was Kevin.

Neither of them have seen Kevin since he left last December, but Nathaniel has enough semi-awkward phone conversations with him after every game he could remember to call, the background always muffling Kevin’s responses like the Foxes always took him to somewhere loud every Friday night.

Nathaniel couldn’t help but jolt when his phone began vibrating in his back pocket, and he had half the thought to think that it was Kevin, especially since he was thinking about it.

Jean let go of his hand so Nathaniel reached down for it, and looked about a second away from asking who it was when Nathaniel stood up.

“I have to take this,” Nathaniel reassured, eyes carefully not reading the name on the screen. Or lack thereof.

The number was from a question mark, and it could have been any number of people.

Due to Nathan’s disappearance, he could only hope that it was Mary.

Jean let him go.

Nathaniel walked towards the entryway on the way to the locker room, not looking up from the floor, and barreled past the newest arrivals. He vaguely acknowledged the person he bumped into on the way out, making a face at the smell of alcohol that came quickly after the encounter.

“Neil?”

Nathaniel paused and looked up at the sound of the nickname he made up for the two people his age he knew to be friends, and came face to face with Kevin Day for the first time since last December.

It was only a matter of a brief glance (Kevin looking more tired, older than Nathaniel had ever seen him, his broken hand hidden inside his tux jacket with ease that told the story of habit) for Nathaniel to feel instantly relieved, in some intrinsic way.

Kevin seemed shocked to see Nathaniel in this event, despite probably having known about the district change before Nathaniel.

His phone vibrated in his hand again, insistent. Nathaniel looked his fill of Kevin, then turned and left. 

* * *

 

The locker rooms weren’t hard to locate, and they weren’t hard to break into either. He left the lights off and ran off to the bench that was furthest from the entrance.

The line clicked on as he brought his phone to his ear.

“Hello?”

“ _Hello,_ ” replied a male voice. “ _Who am I speaking to?_ ”

Ignoring the shaking in his core, Nathaniel steeled his voice and said, “I don’t know, man. You’re the one who called me.”

“ _This is NYPD Sergeant Detective Bell on Major Crimes,_ ” he answered, sounding a bit frustrated. _“Who am I speaking to?”_

It took Nathaniel a moment to react. His mother could have disposed of the phone within any number of reasons under the sun. He told himself not to jump to conclusions. “Why would you call random contacts on a burner phone and ask that, Detective Bell?”

“ _That’s classified, unless you reveal yourself._ ”

Detective Bell could eat his ass. “You can call me Neil. Now, answer my question.”

“ _Well, Neil, we just found a dead body getting mutilated in a hotel room in our area. A tip directed us here, and this phone has yours as the only contact we could recover. We read the perp’s rights, but I’m pretty sure he was your father. By any chance, is your name actually Nathaniel Wesninski?”_ There was a muffled conversation away from the receiver, giving Nathaniel enough time to process what was just said.

Nathan was in New York the whole time, his whole black-out holiday was because he was busy murdering his wife.

“ _FBI came late, but we know Nathan ‘The Butcher’ Wesninski by face, after a run-in with Baltimore PD. We deduced that his wife was the dead body, but unless results come up, she’s a Jane Doe. Now, are you Nathaniel Wesninski and will you come up to New York to testify or do you want us to charge you for obstruction of justice?_ ”

Nathaniel couldn’t answer that.

“ _Are you still there?_ ”

He hung up, the fear of getting traced lost in the sudden numbness that overtook him.

The logical part of his mind informed him that getting traced wasn’t a problem, since they had contacts within the NYPD and they had enough money to keep Nathaniel out of prison.

He was hiding inside the Blackwell Academy’s locker room, sitting in the dark with his phone on his lap, vaguely aware that he’s skipping out on the banquet by staying here, leaving Kevin fending for himself on a table full of Ravens.

He should contact Uncle Stuart before Lola, Romero, or Jackson could get the news. He had to staunch this as quickly as possible before his father could ask for bail or a trial.

He should tell Ichirou, just to let him know that it might postpone their weekend off. Or he should tell Jean, just to let him know that Nathaniel was going to be distracted about this for a few days.

He should get up and go back to the banquet.

 _He should_ —

But instead, he sat there, struggling to process one simple concept:

 _His mother was dead and he couldn’t do anything to stop it_.

The locker room door opened with a loud clatter, the lights flickering on soon after. Four people entered the locker room, and Nathaniel could only recognize them as the shapes he saw them.

Coach David Wymack, Andrew Minyard, Kevin, and Jean entered the locker room, the former three stopping by the entrances as they watched Jean make a beeline for Nathaniel, a concerned look on his face.

Nathaniel watched him approach too, lifeless and unresponsive as Jean slipped his hand into Nathaniel’s. He watched Jean kneel in front of him, aware of how this looked like to someone else but not caring to move.

In French, Jean whispered, “It’s been an hour and you haven’t come back. What happened? Are you hurt?”

It’s been an hour? This was news to Nathaniel, who still couldn’t command his body to react to what Detective Bell had told him. He flipped his phone screen to the front, and confirmed that, yes, it has been an hour since the police called him on his mother’s burner phone.

“Was it him?” Jean asked, not softly this time. There was an edge to his voice that contained the same amount of conviction in the moments he knew, technically, he could do nothing to help Nathaniel with. Three out of five people inside that locker room knew who Jean was talking about, and it was the same person Nathaniel didn’t want to talk about at the moment.

“Neil,” Jean said, one last time, urgently.

Nathaniel shook his head. This wasn’t something he could tell Jean. It wasn’t that Jean and he weren’t close, it was that Jean had no need for that information. Mary was the least of Jean’s problems, and explaining everything to him would mean having to explain what lengths Nathaniel had pulled just to get her out of Nathan’s hands.

Only to end up mutilated in a hotel room in New York.

Jean’s shoulders sagged, defeated, his gaze trailing off to the side. There was a brief commotion by the doorway, movement Nathaniel was too disoriented to consider a threat. Jean stood up as someone approached, and the air around them began smelling of strong alcohol.

Kevin.

“Both of you,” Nathaniel said, in French. “Sit down.”           

Both of them sat down, flanking Nathaniel on either side. Somehow, the smell of alcohol was comforting, certainly less than a smoke, but Nathaniel didn’t bring a pack and lighter with him on the drive over.

Andrew Minyard crossed the room to sit down on the bench in front of them, his knees a warm promise against Nathaniel’s. The leg shaking was eye-catching, a pattern that calmed Nathaniel down. Somehow, that gave him enough strength to sit up properly so that his eye wouldn’t automatically drop there. Minyard whipped out a lighter and a packet, shaking one at the general direction of the door.

“You’re not going to smoke in here, Andrew,” said Coach Wymack. It was an odd way of reprimanding his athlete.

Andrew returned that with a lazy grin, flicking his lighter on and shielding the tip to light it. His eyes slid over to Kevin, then Nathaniel. He shook the pack at Nathaniel as an offer, his close-mouthed grin staying firmly in place.

Nathaniel reached forward, the first time he’d moved in an hour and he felt it in his creaking joints. He plucked a stick from the pack and waved the rest of his fingers for the lighter. He could hear Coach Wymack’s exasperated sigh as the large man left the room.

When the door clicked shut, Andrew moved to lean down instead of just reaching across the gap with his hand, aligning the cherry of his own stick with the edge of Nathaniel’s while it was still tucked firmly between grinning lips, peering up at Nathaniel.

Nathaniel brought the stick to his lips, giving Andrew one last lingering glance before closing his eyes, feeling the numbness flow out through his lungs. It was acrid, burning. When heat began to push tears into his eyes, he let it all go.

He couldn’t remember the last time he smoked something over-the-counter. Or smoked at all, period.

“You’ve had better than this,” Andrew said, the grin on his face turning his words teasing instead of being the veiled insult it was supposed to be.

Nathaniel opened his eyes and let out a small laugh. He looked back at Andrew, resting the joint on his knee. “High-end tobacco was never my thing.”

“I didn’t even know you smoked,” Kevin said.

Jean snorted derisively, which earned him a look from their former teammate. Smoking was the least of Kevin’s complaints and criticisms about Nathaniel’s life choices. Nathaniel killed people for a living.

“I didn’t know you drank,” Nathaniel replied, feeling and sounding tired.

“We taught him that,” Andrew said, tone as derisive as Jean’s snort. “He took to it with gusto. A budding alcoholic.”

Jean chuckled, reaching for Kevin’s bottle. Kevin gave it to him without a second thought. “You sound proud about giving someone an addiction.”

“And I suppose Riko isn’t proud about raising him to be addicted to some dumb sport.” Andrew replied.

Nathaniel chuckled, but it sounded more like a pleased sigh. “Spoken like a true college athlete. Speaking of, how was the rat earlier?”

Jean made a face at the vodka and handed it back to Kevin. Andrew observed Nathaniel carefully. Nathaniel let him.

“He was horrible,” Jean admitted. “But that’s normal. Five times, he demanded Kevin come back.”

“Pathetic,” Nathaniel commented, bringing his cigarette close to his face and inhaling the smoke.

“I recall you pressing just as hard,” Andrew commented, gaze sharp as he eyed Jean.

“He had to,” Kevin replied. “I got it. I’m not coming back.”

Nathaniel nodded sagely, “Wise choice, young’n.”

“You’re two years younger than him,” Jean quipped.

This circuit of jokes and passing bottles continued. Andrew continued to watch all of this happen and Nathaniel continued to let him. At some point, Andrew called Nathaniel a waste of a stick when he wouldn’t run the cherry down at the pace Andrew was going.

When it was time to leave, Coach Wymack collected them. Nathaniel thanked them for their company as he let Jean hold his hand down the hall. Before parting ways by the exit, Kevin leaned down to whisper into Nathaniel’s ears.

“Whatever happened before we got in there, stay strong, Neil.”

As Kevin turned to make his drunken march down the hall, Nathaniel locked eyes with Andrew Minyard, who had his hands in his pockets and a grin placed meticulously on his face.

That was the closest Nathaniel got to an admission of friendship from Kevin. He had to thank someone for that spine.

He nodded at Andrew as he let Jean drag him to his car for the drive back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> taking a brief break to get my nerves in check, y'all! the next i'll be updating would be around june 11th, my side of the world so :/
> 
> comments and kudos are still very much appreciated though!! also, thoughts on a spin-off series for one particular character...? inbox us @aceaaroniscanon if you're curious!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen, technically, it's the 11th for me, but since i'm supposed to be out until tomorrow, i'm posting early, this is a Gift
> 
> also, no one stopped me when i said i'd update the 11th even tho i said three days ago that i'd take a break. y'all played me like that. and are still playin me bc here i am. updating.

Bi-monthly, representatives of organized crime groups liked to meet up formally in the meeting rooms at the top of the Nest. Nathaniel wasn’t too familiar with the set-up of the whole thing. Did they email each other? Send couriers with messages that alluded to the meetings? Did they use burner phones or send each other messengers and lackeys?

After years of training, he was only familiar with getting called on to attend one. He still wasn’t entirely sure about how the internationals did it.

(His father had made sure to tell him how it worked for them, and Nathaniel had made sure to appear like he was listening lest he wanted to get a beating.

Home-school was a horrible experience, obviously.)

Anyway, there was a novelty to the idea of having this huge mob boss meeting, but he couldn’t really bask in the humor in it all.

Currently, his mother’s actual body was six feet under in a remote cemetery in England, and Nathan was residing inside Sing Sing after getting found with her body in the first place, protected by a thousand moot guards and defenses. All he needed now was a reason to end him once and for all.

Nathaniel had to adapt to the times, regardless.

From the corner of his eye, Uncle Stuart appeared nonchalant enough at a passing glance, but the way he turned his glass over and over in his hand was a dead giveaway that he was worried for Nathaniel’s sake, too wary to lose another family member after losing his sister. Nathaniel breathed in, slow, and tried not to snap at it. _He doesn’t mean to be overbearing_ , Nathaniel told himself.

The long, low table in the middle of the meeting room, Nathaniel thought, was a sort of cliché way of going at a meeting with some of the most powerful heads of organized crime in the world though. (Or maybe his father’s men had watched too much Kill Bill when he was still in home-school.) Standing in place of his incarcerated father, fitted in a new black suit, Nathaniel made sure to sit straight-backed and stoic for the entirety of the meeting, never mind the fact that just had to play a full half downstairs before this meeting. His job had been made clear: guard the Lord and look menacing enough that the heads don’t get cocky about the fact that Nathan was missing and his exhaustion was not to get in the way of that.

(Honestly, Nathaniel should be doing the exact opposite. After all, that was what Nathan had done. Nathaniel didn’t share Nathan’s stature but the basics of being a guard dog for one of the most powerful people in the world is to appear stupid until provoked. It lets people’s guard down when you don’t provide facts openly. Basic Con 101.)

Lord Moriyama sat just as straight-backed at the head of the table, looking regally at the sight of people gathered, only an arm’s length away from Nathaniel. There were gray hairs growing at the sides of his head, somehow making him look sharper rather than elderly.

If contracted by the right people (or if he weren’t obligatorily loyal to the Lord), Nathaniel could easily kill a man this frail.

The meeting began at the Lord’s word, and Nathaniel barely had to struggle with the layers of code words and double meanings hiding the actual purpose of these meetings. At this point, he was as fluent in the language as he was in French. They were updates on smuggled proceeds and the amounts they had accumulated, the amounts they were going to pay one another for a few favors. There was an instance where the caravans and cartels resolved their territorial disputes in exchange of a few wares and weapons with a measly few words in exchange.

Most of the heads spoke in their native languages, which wasn’t a struggle for all the people involved in the meeting. Some spoke in English, presumably more used to the adjustment. (Nathaniel understood that some languages were intimate when spoken, so they used English as a boundary line for formality.) Some, though, spoke in accented, formal Japanese, a sign of either respect, condescension or brown-nosing, in Nathaniel’s opinion.

Ultimately unwilling to start a polite, passive-aggressive fight with some random family head from Estonia, Nathaniel bit the inside of his cheek to keep his remarks to himself or, worse, his criticisms.

No, not with Uncle Stuart watching.

Nathaniel had been in a meeting like this once before, but only because Nathan had wanted to teach him a thing or two about how to behave around mob bosses. His father’s behavior, though unsavory, was understandable for a person with the trademark Wesninski temper. But still, Nathaniel believed he could refrain from being as uncouth as his father, so he kept his mouth shut.

After all, he had to set a good example, says Uncle Stuart who has had a total of five glasses of wine since they started.

So, he sat in silence, sipped the wine that was offered, nodding respectfully to the servants that offered to pour more into his full cup, and wiggled his toes when they began getting too numb from underneath his body weight.

When the talks finally died down, Lord Moriyama finally stirred. Nathaniel had been observing, as was the Lord, for sure, but even he was startled by the movement. He didn’t always meet up with Moriyama Kengo, but when he did, he could always cite reasons on as to why the Lord was so respected that even Nathan Wesninski bent at the knee.

“As you all know,” he started, a strong voice in accented English. “Nathan is in prison at the moment. His son has volunteered to step in for him, as proper sons should do.” This last part was said with a dismissive flick of his fingers from where his hand was laying on the low table.

Polite applause broke out, but Nathaniel knew that they were not pleased to see the old pit bull replaced with a new one when they more obviously wanted the whole concept of a guard dog gone. Nathaniel responded to this by giving a modest nod of his head, and giving each representative a cold glance, including Uncle Stuart.

He knew what he looked like to them, Nathan with Mary’s frame: a calculated killer with the guns to prove it. Sitting tame at the far end of Kengo’s leash did not improve his image to them. No, not even to Uncle Stuart.

He was not here to improve his image though. He was here to remind them that they’d be dead if a Moriyama wanted it so.

“I’m glad to be here,” Nathaniel said curtly, in formal Japanese, as was protocol. “I’ll be looking forward to working with all of you.”

* * *

 

­

Nathaniel was required to stay behind after the meeting adjourned, an old protocol that became tradition, he was sure, because killing a Moriyama would be worse than committing suicide. You’d have risked both yourself and your whole family if you even colluded in a plot to assassinate a Moriyama, and your skin would be up in the black market before the day even ended.

He dragged his feet out from under his whole body’s weight, stretching them a little as he sat cross-legged on the pillow beneath him.

They were talking about Tetsuji.

“That silly sports thing of his has,” the agent coughed, then continued for a couple more minutes. His face was sour as he drank his bourbon to alleviate his throat. “It’s become quite the investment in the last thirty years, hasn’t it? It’d be a shame to see it go so soon.”

Nathaniel had done his research, as he’d also been required to. He had been told more than once to do research on anyone mooching up to the Lord after formal meetings so, he did. Seated in front of Lord Moriyama was Agent Sadler of the FBI, their mole into the US federal government.

See, Agent Sadler had a daughter in the US Exy court.

Since, Lord Moriyama’s health began regressing as soon as he reached the age of 70 (something genetic, presumably), he also began tying up loose ends the moment it started looking like he was living with a deadline. Those loose ends commonly involved the second branch’s, and thus: cutting off Exy.

Nathaniel knew that, subjectively, he should disapprove of Lord Moriyama’s decision of shutting down the proceeds from Tetsuji’s little star project and getting it off the Moriyama paygrade. He was on the team for a few more years, and the Lord was rushing his decisions as fast as he could without disrupting the order too much. But dogs seldom held favors from their masters, and Nathaniel was just a new pup. So, he bit the inside of his cheek and behaved.

Agent Sadler opened his mouth to say something else, to appear to have bravado perhaps, but Lord Moriyama held up a hand to stop him. Nathaniel watched, with some amusement, as the agent shut his mouth.

The law bends for no one his ass. It definitely looked like it was bending for _someone_.

“I am willing to withhold my judgement,” Lord Moriyama said in English, “But only if it has good reason to stay. My brother proved to invest and profit from this hobby and has provided by cutting off his own loose ends by taking in that white child.”

(‘That white child’ being Jean Moreau.

Taking Jean in was originally a Hatford idea, a bargain they drove to keep the alliances solid between the Karimis, Moreaus, and Wesninskis. They were supposed to look for someone suitable enough to raise the child without the wrong people knowing what was up, but it was a time-oriented deal, and they were running out of time.

Nathan Wesninski wanted someone to hold little Jean up in a basement somewhere (possibly to train him or possibly to torture him as he’d done to his son), and Elias Karimi wanted the child dead, so Tetsuji decided to take the reins when the Moreaus handed the case over to Interpol instead of honoring their deals with the Karimis and Wesninskis.

It was the only main branch case that ended up in the second branch’s hands, as far as Nathaniel knew, and it was part of the reason why the Wesninskis were buried deeper into Moriyama debt.)

“But if I step down,” the Lord continued. “I have to see to it that everything is in order before my son takes over. As of now, things are shaky because of all the media focused on the second branch about Kayleigh Day’s son. Moving now would be foolish, so the decision remains on hold.”

Nathaniel agreed on the media focus. It had taken him hours to head out of Edgar Allan’s campus traffic on the way over before the game, and the internationals had a worse time getting parked with the seats packed.

(The ERC had decided that today was the day they were going to announce that the Ravens were going to move to the Southern district, along with their starting lineup. It was quite the abrupt decision, especially since they were doing it the same year Kevin announced that he was going to be one of the Foxes’ newest starting strikers, so every sports media outlet wanted to get in on that detail.)

There was a brief silence that featured Agent Sadler shaking in his seat, his sweaty palms warming his glass of bourbon.

Lord Moriyama shifted to look at Nathaniel. “What about you, boy?”

Nathaniel blinked. Still in formal Japanese, he said, “Yes, Lord Moriyama?”

“In English,” Lord Moriyama said. “I’m seeking your counsel on the decision for the second branch. It would be rude to exclude Special Agent Sadler.”

Nathaniel nodded. He tried not to get anxious about if his answer was going to be right. He silently thanked all those impromptu speech lessons he was required to do in home-school. “Well, sir, since you’re trying to cut loose ends for your son, it might be a good exercise for him to do it himself, since you have little to no loose ends at this point. American cultures rarely think of it as a predecessor incapable of finishing what he started, but as a smooth transition from old to new.

“My father, for example. He passes off small jobs to get me acquainted to my role, lets me deal with the paperwork and the business front whenever he’s busy with more important jobs. When I’m available, he gives me assignments. If you chose to try it out, your son won’t get too overwhelmed when he eventually takes over.”

Nathaniel couldn’t believe the shit he just spouted, but it seemed to satisfy both men. Agent Sadler was nodding along, probably thinking that Ichirou was going to be the lesser evil. Lord Moriyama was unreadable, but definitely not offended. Nathaniel let out a slow sigh of relief.

“He’s quite the replacement,” Sadler commented, stirring the ice around his glass. “We wouldn’t be able to say the same about his father. From the reports, I hear Nathan’s cracking under the pressure of testifying. From lifetime to 20 years, if he starts giving them names, apparently.”

Nathaniel jolted in his seat. “Wh—Excuse me but, why on Earth would they give him a statement like that?”

Sadler sighed, shaking his head. “He’s held at Sing Sing at the moment, which means the State police have him—”

“I’m aware of the legalities,” Nathaniel cut in, heated. “I’m sorry, but do the New York police think they’re going to milk information on smaller groups when New York is under the Butcher’s jurisdiction?”

The Lord waved a hand, “They don’t know that Nathan is the higher up. He seems to be taking the fastest way out of prison.”

Nathaniel took a deep breath, then another, aware of Lord Moriyama’s pointed gaze telling him to back down on the issue. He barely had a hold over changing Lord Moriyama’s mind. Most of his plans hinged on having Nathan out of the future, because if Mary was dead, then that means Nathan knew about the body. If Nathan took a plea deal, Nathaniel wouldn’t have the luxury of holding an assassination over Nathan’s head in prison, because the FBI would be putting him into witness protection.

He squeezed his eyes shut and collected himself. When he opened his eyes, he said, “I apologize, sirs. I’m just—there’s a huge risk that my father might… say something that could compromise us, not to the authorities, but to our own people. The best way out of lying to the police, hell, even the Feds, is by sacrificing little bits of your faction that you can live without.

“Currently, the only group in New York in my father’s contingency plan is part of the Triads, and if the triads think we’re selling them out for some off-base Baltimore wanna-be murderer, it could cost us up to millions in winning their favor back. My father would never sell out, but he acts like a brash mule most of the time, never really thinks before he tries to save himself. Financially speaking.”

The Lord nodded, likely seeing the reality to what all Nathaniel was saying. It was true that their weakest link in New York was the Luens’ traffickers, but the Wesninski contingency plan was to send the State police and the Feds into a wild goose chase that started in California and ended in a remote island between the Philippines and Malaysia.

That and, well, he’s been cutting off all of Nathan’s trusted lawyers before they could reach his father. If at least one good defense attorney got in there to help Nathan’s case, there was a chance this couldn’t go well.

He hoped that Lord Moriyama didn’t point out that Nathaniel could very well assist his father into lying to the police himself.

His dread grew worse and worse as the meeting went on, his concerns ignored. His days were numbered, they always were, but Nathaniel had hoped he’d at least die by the hands of one of the rivaling groups, maybe if Riko finally pulled his head out of his ass and paid someone competent to have him killed.

But his father?

Agent Sadler and Lord Moriyama stood, shaking hands as if they came into a consensus. Really, all Lord Moriyama did was lead Sadler on, get him running on circles. Sadler had come into the room, fully expecting to get the Moriyama’s off the Exy business without shaking the foundations, but all that happened was Ichirou’s inheritance of the growing issue.

Nathaniel stood up after them, careful not to wince at the numb feeling in his joints. He’d been sitting on the floor for hours now, and showing any kind of obvious weakness would defeat the purpose of his role.

“Kid,” Lord Moriyama said, in informal Japanese.

Nathaniel schooled his expression into something less disrespectful at the prospect of being called _kid_ when he was nineteen.

Lord Moriyama had seen his expression already though, and gave him a cold smile. “I expect you to take care of your bastard of a father.”

Nathaniel felt a rush wave over him at those words, a gruesome mixture of relief, satisfaction, anxiety, and _finally_.

Nathaniel look a slow breath. “Yes, Lord Moriyama.”

By the sidelines, Agent Sadler looked wary of this exchange, uncertain if he should ask what it was about. Nathaniel hoped, for Agent Sadler’s already marred career, that he wouldn’t.

The bodyguards outside flanked the Lord as they all walked out of the meeting room, and when Lord Moriyama turned to look at Nathaniel, he said, “Welcome, Butcher.”

That was how Moriyama Kengo left him: standing in the middle of the hallway, trying the title on for size, feeling wrong but excited to finally end it all.


	5. Chapter 5

“There. There, grab the cube,” Ichirou muttered, kicking a little at Nathaniel’s knee.

Nathaniel huffed, resisting the urge to elbow Ichirou off his knee. “I know what I’m doing, Rou, I’ve finished this game before.”

The apartment went back into silence as Nathaniel maneuvered his character around the level, moving around cubes and dodging enemy bots. It all added up to the moment of the jump, the tense silence getting to Nathaniel as he pushed down on the d-pad twice and watched, helplessly, as his character died in-game.

“Motherfucker,” Ichirou muttered. He kicked at Nathaniel’s knee again, then leaned forward to wrench the controller out of Nathaniel’s hands. “You were saying?”

“Shut up. My memory’s fuzzy.”

“Are you that lousy with a gun? I’m doubting my hiring decisions now.” Ichirou quipped while they waited for the level reloaded. He sniffed, then dabbed a finger on the nose strip he put on minutes before.

Nathaniel rolled his eyes. “My job depends on me double-tapping to confirm a kill and you did not hire me, I inherited my position. What’s your point?”

“That you suck at playing Portal, man. Get a clue.”

Nathaniel scoffed, then leaned back into the couch cushions as Ichirou stopped talking to focus on the game. On reflex, he reached for his phone and unlocked it, checking his notifications for a message.

“You better not be checking your email on a day off, I swear to God.”

“Or you’ll what? Rip off my blackheads?” Nathaniel sneered.

There was a brief silence in which all that could be heard were the buttons on the controller. Once Ichirou cleared the level, he dropped the controller between them and snatched Nathaniel’s phone, pointedly turning it off right in front of the younger man.

Nathaniel leaned forward to grab at it, squawking indignantly. “Rou, what the fuck?! I could get called in at any minute.”

Ichirou brought it out of his reach, which wasn’t really that hard. He scoffed, “Please, what’s the worst that could happen?”

“Oh, let’s see,” Nathaniel settled back in the middle of the couch and counted off his fingers. “Your brother could kill one of my teammates, your brother could kill one of Kevin’s teammates, I could get called in by one of the higher ups to kill someone ASAP. Should I go on?”

Ichirou made disapproving noise, shifting on his cushion to properly look at Nathaniel. “What’s this really about, because I know you’re usually not this uppity about disconnecting with everything for the two or more days we reserve just to relax.”

Nathaniel took a deep breath, then crashed backwards into the other end of the couch, turning to groan into a throw pillow.

The fact that it was their weekend off was the exact reason why he didn’t want to talk about it. Usually they would room in Ichirou’s apartment for the whole weekend, doing nothing but play video games and watch movies and be the kids they never got to be. They would do this once or twice every month, and they’d disconnect from everything: whole gang thing, the killing, the assassinations and assignments and accounting. They would talk about life, talk about what Nathaniel was doing in college or if Ichirou’s dating life was going well.

But right now, Nathaniel’s life was basically his job and he didn’t want to talk about it.

Ichirou nudged at his hip with a socked foot. “Nathaniel, hey, hurry up before my alarm goes off and I have to take this damn thing off my nose.”

Nathaniel groaned into the pillow once more, with feeling, before turning his head and pouting.

Scoffing again, Ichirou said, “Quit being dramatic.”

“I have to kill Nathan,” Nathaniel blurted out.

There was a moment to pause at that, and it was understandable.

Nearly every single person Nathaniel cherished knew that, to Nathaniel, thoughts of patricide were as normal as breathing. Ichirou wasn’t an exception. Despite the fact that they disconnected from their respective blood relations every two to four days bimonthly, biological family was hard not to bring up in the middle of a conversation about their pasts.

When Nathaniel said getting assigned to kill Nathan was a long time coming, he meant it.

“Were you ordered to?” Ichirou finally asked, his tone suddenly serious. The way Nathaniel worded it, it seemed like he had no other choice, never mind that Nathaniel had been wanting it for so long. Hypothetically speaking, killing Nathan was Nathaniel’s life goal. Literally speaking, it was near impossible.

The perks of childhood psychological trauma.

“Your father said so the other day, after the meeting,” Nathaniel explained. He spared Ichirou the part where he set it all up, left out the desperation that had clawed at his throat like the thought of killing Nathan was a drop of water after nineteen whole years of drought. “He even called me the Butcher.”

“Oh, that is gross,” Ichirou uttered under his breath, brow furrowing into that effortless look of disgust only Moriyama brothers could always seem to muster. “Dad needs to get his facts checked.”

Nathaniel snorted, rolling his eyes.

Ichirou’s alarm sounded out, startling them out of the conversation. Ichirou shot up from his seat, leaving Nathaniel to wallow in his misery in peace, staring at the game idling on the TV. He heard water running from where Ichirou was washing out in the bathroom.

“Fuck you for reminding me, by the way,” Nathaniel threw over his shoulder. “Here I was thinking I could avoid thinking about it today.”

Ichirou laughed, loud and pointed enough for Nathaniel to hear. “You? Forgetting to think about how much you want your father dead? Who the fuck do you think you’re kidding?”

Nathaniel picked at the fabric of the throw under his head, biting the inside of his cheek. After a beat, he said, “That’s fair.”

Ichirou’s voice grew louder as he walked out of the bathroom. “What does that have to do with you checking your phone though?”

His phone. On the side table.

Nathaniel sat up, fast enough to give himself a little vertigo, but it was too late since Ichirou was already settling back into the cushion by his feet. Nathaniel sighed and plopped back down, glaring at the older man.

Ichirou shifted so that he was facing Nathaniel, his elbow laying on the back of the couch, hand supporting his cheek. “Well?”

Nathaniel nudged him by the thigh, and Ichirou nudged back. They continued to sit in silence before Nathaniel said, “I sent out a call to arrange a team.”

Ichirou made a face at that. “Do you actually want a team?”

Nathaniel shook his head. “But if I go in there to kill him myself, I might not get out fast enough before I get caught killing him.”

(What he wanted was for Nathan to die a slow, agonizing death. It didn’t matter how: with a gun or a knife or the slow intake of whatever poison Nathaniel had thought to get a hold of; it just mattered that he saw it happen. He wanted it so bad, his bones ached. He wanted to do it alone. He wanted to do to Nathan what Nathan did to Mary, and he didn’t want it any other way.

He also wanted to forget about this whole incident, to walk out of Ichirou’s apartment tomorrow knowing that his father was dead. The thought of having to plan and kill Nathan now made him feel like the earth was going to open up beneath his feet. The thought of a knife in his hand, tip to Nathan’s throat, made his palms sweat. The thought of a gun pressed against Nathan’s guts turned his wrists into jello.)

Ichirou took the moment to fill the silence between that confession and the next statement by turning off the console, the TV, and fixing the clutter around them. Nathaniel tracked his movements almost on autopilot, used to keeping an eye on the other dangers inside a given area.

When Ichirou settled back down the couch, he gave Nathaniel a considering look. Then, he said, “I might have a person who could hospitalize him so that you can finish the job on his death bed.”

Nathaniel shifted so that he was laying down on the couch properly. “Yeah?”

Ichirou nodded, grabbing his phone from where he’d put it down beside Nathaniel’s by the coffee table. Nathaniel pointedly frowned at the movement, and Ichirou pointedly ignored him in favor of unlocking his phone.

Unceremoniously, he tossed his phone over to Nathaniel after he was done going through it. The contact was open to the contact _Poisoner, The_ in Japanese, and it kind of endeared Nathaniel that Ichirou would have his phone in Japanese.

“The Poisoner,” he deadpanned.

Ichirou snorted. “I dubbed him that, don’t diss.”

“All the more reason to diss, to be honest. We both know that you should never be allowed to name things, much less murderers. What’d he do before you found him?”

Ichirou cleaned his nails idly, his tone casual as he said, “Two years ago, clients started dropping like flies around South Carolina. All of them, unbeknownst to the police, had one thing in common: they had someone with them before their time of death. He pretended to be a hooker and drugged clients so conspicuously, their deaths seemed almost normal. And when the victims were out, he took their money and splurged it for his own personal gain. The police didn’t even think to look closer.”

Nathaniel nodded, impressed. “How did you find him? Wasn’t that around the time your security personnel went berserk all of a sudden?”

Ichirou grinned, and it was a grin that Nathaniel didn’t like because it meant that Ichirou had done something incredibly stupid and he liked that he got away with it. “I found him because he killed a business partner of mine from the side. I looked into the report and had someone really look into the medical exams done post-mortem. Did my own gum-shoeing.”

“No one says that anymore.”

“Shut up. Anyway, The Poisoner _was_ the reason my personnel went berserk.”

Nathaniel blinked, then slowly sat up. Ichirou watched him warily, rightfully so. Nathaniel would be wary too if he told his soon-to-be personal bodyguard that he personally went after a serial killer just to hire him out of curiosity.

“You fucking idiot,” Nathaniel hissed, but there was a grin on his face when he said it. Mostly because Ichirou’s wariness was amusing to him. “You went after someone you knew was a serial killer and you didn’t tell _anyone_?”

Ichirou shrugged, cautiously smug. Nathaniel punched him in the thigh, hard, because he knew it was something he could get away with during their weekends off. Ichirou groaned, then started laughing under his breath.

“You’re derailing the conversation,” Ichirou said through his laughter as Nathaniel started pushing him by the shoulder. “We were talking about someone who was about to help you kill your father.”

Nathaniel dropped his fists at that, mock-scowling at Ichirou. He retrieved Ichirou’s phone from where they’d lost it between the couch cushions and contemplated the number on the phone.

He squinted down at the Japanese text, then flicked a look towards Ichirou. “Should I call or text?”

Ichirou shrugged. “He usually answers when I call. He might be in class though so. Be careful.”

“When you call? In class?” Nathaniel mocked, taking a screenshot of the contact to send to himself. “Sounds like you just turned yourself into somebody’s sugar daddy.”

It was Ichirou’s turn to punch him on the thigh now, and it actually hurt, surprisingly. Nathaniel grinned and bore it, maneuvering around the Japanese text to see about sending the picture to himself.

“I’m _not_ the Poisoner’s sugar daddy,” Ichirou insisted, resorting to poking Nathaniel by the side as Nathaniel continued to grin at Ichirou’s continued aggression.

“Oh, so you didn’t find him attractive? I thought you said he was posing as a hooker. Kind of hard if you don’t have the looks for it.” Nathaniel said, with minimum effort on trying not to laugh at what he was suggesting. His lack of ticklish sides frustrated Ichirou further, so he twisted around to grab at one of the throw pillows behind him.

With the screenshot sent, Nathaniel tossed his phone back across the couch, causing Ichirou to drop the pillow and scramble for it.

“You’re horrible,” Ichirou finally said, after a moment.

“You didn’t say no,” Nathaniel wiggled his eyebrows, and laughed when Ichirou finally hit him with the throw pillow.

* * *

 

Sometimes, when they were too restless to sleep and too stubborn to talk about their problems, Ichirou would gather a couple blankets and pillows, grab his keys, and he and Nathaniel would head down to the basement parking lot and drive around the city for a couple minutes. By the end of each trip, the buzzing energy in their bodies would die down.

Ichirou would like to call it interactive white noise. Nathaniel liked to call it the cure to insomnia. Really, it was just a waste of gas, but neither of them wanted to admit that their coping mechanisms were expensive and odd.

They both loved it.

The conversations from earlier triggered a chain reaction, making Ichirou remember the night he’d met The Poisoner. He couldn’t help it. The ambience was there: the silence inside the car, the annoying fog lights people seemed keen on pointing at his face, the city lights around them, memories of the liberating feeling of being vulnerable and on his own; with nothing but the holster strapped to his side to protect him from the dangerous person he had in the passenger side seat, Ichirou was back to twenty-three in a rush of cold air.

He flicked his turn signal on as he moved to overtake the car in front of them.

“Rou?”

Ichirou threw a quick glance at Nathaniel, curled up in the passenger seat, bare feet on the center console, back against the car door. He looked settled, soft, not at all like a hired killer. At his core, this was who Nathaniel was.

It didn’t escape him that this arrangement felt entirely like something he could have had way before Nathaniel came into the folds of the Moriyama-Wesninski business relations. Ichirou could have had this with Riko, if it wasn’t for the fact that Tetsuji had grabbed Riko from Kengo’s uncaring hands the moment it seemed okay.

Ichirou’s earliest memories involved his little brother, and most of them were hostile in the way only a six-year old could be around their baby brother. His last few memories of Riko were full of a bitterness only a seventeen-year old would have of their attention-seeking little brother.

“Rou.”

Ichirou hummed his acknowledgement, unwilling to part with the memories of Riko, to part with the what-ifs and could-have-beens, just yet. Nathaniel was living proof that he’d moved past it, that Riko had come out way worse under his uncle’s reign rather than their father’s, and Ichirou couldn’t bear to face that just yet.

Slurring, Nathaniel said, “About what your father said to me at the meeting.”

Ichirou hummed again, curious this time.

“I don’t want to be The Butcher.”

Ichirou considered this and, when they reached a red light, Nathaniel.

Nathaniel was as much like Nathan as Ichirou was like his own father. Looks were all they had in common with their fathers. They were completely different people. Nathaniel was too collected and organized, practically genius compared to his father’s archaic style of massacre.

But he knew what Nathaniel was getting at here. It was that being The Butcher meant that Nathaniel had to be the guard dog Ichirou had to sicc on people who defied him, it meant that Nathaniel would have to lose what little autonomy he had left from his childhood, that Nathaniel had to become the thing he’d learned to hate the most.

It was the same gaping hole staring right back at Ichirou.

Maybe that was why his what-ifs with Riko were just those: hypothetical and meaningless. Things that could have happened but didn’t. Riko couldn’t be the little brother Ichirou found in Nathaniel because they weren’t the same in a fundamental way only people with their position could understand.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be the Butcher,” Ichirou finally said.

“No,” Nathaniel responded. “No, it’s not just that. I don’t want to be Nathaniel either. I don’t want the shit it entails to be me: the people I’ll have to take charge of after I kill him, having to take care of my teammates because of Riko’s temper tantrums, having to resort to having bimonthly vacations with you to know what it feels like to be nineteen. I don’t want the name, or the killing, or the bribery. Everything.”

“So you want to quit the mercenary business?”

“No… I just… I can’t explain it. I want a restart button. I want to wake up to something else. Shuffle my options around. It’s childish but, hey, I’m just speaking my mind.”

Ichirou shrugged, feeling his mouth lift into a bitter smile. “I’d kill for that option. But I think you have it. You really do.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

The rest of the ride back was quiet.

* * *

 

While Ichirou was asleep in the other room, Nathaniel prepared the coffeemaker and sent the Poisoner a text to settle it once and for all.

 _hey got this number from ichirou as a favor. i’m neil, a friend of his from work. He says you can help me with a job? call me if you can,_ he sent at around six AM. It was early for a weekend, but Nathaniel had the whole day to wait, and it made his bones settle in the first sign of contentment it’s touched for weeks.

Around the time Nathaniel had prepared the mugs and was waiting for the coffeemaker to stop gurgling, his phone buzzed on the counter, nearly startling him. Ichirou’s apartment was always too quiet, especially since neither of them were very noisy people.

“ _I can probably do it_ ,” said a gravelly tone over the line when Nathaniel finally clicked his headset on, the voice in his ear impassive and a little bit exasperated. Nathaniel had to hold back a retort about polite greetings, remembering that this was strictly professional and highly conditional, considering Ichirou may or may not have expressed that he was going to give the Poisoner assignments from people like Nathaniel. “ _What’s the job_.”

“I need an inside job on Sing Sing,” Nathaniel started, fidgeting with the handle of the teaspoon inside his mug. “I need someone in there to be hospitalized and I need him dead by the evening.”

“ _Sing Sing. As in, the New York correctional facility Sing Sing?_ ”

“Yeah.”

“ _Why get him out if you’re going to kill him anyway?”_

Nathaniel blinked, considering that question for a second. The thought of telling a total stranger that this was half of a revenge plot was kind of distasteful to think about this early in the morning.

“Look, you said you could do it,” Nathaniel said instead. “Why question the logistics of it?”

“ _I said that I could, not that I would. Give me a good reason why I should._ ”

Well, he had a point. Nathaniel took a deep breath and tensed a bit as he heard the shower turn on in the other room.

Nathaniel was familiar with business deals.

“I’ll pay for all the things you’ll need on the trip. But only if you actually need it. I can have the tickets sent to you by Friday, settle all the fake IDs and passports you’ll need, if you want an alibi to come with it. Do you have anything you’re doing next weekend?”

At that, Ichirou walked out of his room, looking freshly showered and pink cheeked from the heat of it. He seemed to have heard the tail end of Nathaniel’s question and raised a brow at him. Behind Nathaniel, the coffeemaker clicked, so he ignored the silent question and poured them their coffee.

“ _I’m free for the weekends.”_

Right, the Poisoner was still in school. “So, I’ll pick you up Saturday—“

“ _Now hold on just a goddamn second, Neil_.”

Nathaniel held on, stirring his coffee. Ichirou walked around him from behind, looking around the pantry for his cereal, probably.

“ _I haven’t agreed to it yet._ ”

Nathaniel shook his head, rolling his eyes. He stirred his coffee as he said, “Name your price.”

There was a silence, a whole minute of it and Nathaniel could only count it because his phone was face up on the counter where the seconds ticked by as the call continued. Ichirou peered at it in passing, probably still not wearing his contacts. Nathaniel let out a sigh and bumped Ichirou aside to open the cabinet where his cereals were.

“I can wire it straight into your account, if that’s what you want,” Nathaniel said as he took a sip of his coffee, a grimace forming on his face at the heat spreading so suddenly down his sternum.

“ _Job for a job_ ,” the Poisoner proposed instead.

“What do you mean?” Nathaniel’s brows furrowed. Ichirou stuck his head inside the fridge, looking for the milk. Nathaniel wonders idly if Ichirou ever had to deal with the Poisoner being this difficult or if Ichirou gets double standards because he was paying for the guy’s tuition.

 “ _You come down here and help me with a job when I call you for it. Free of charge._ ”

“Deal,” Nathaniel said, taking a large gulp out of his coffee and only slightly regretting the feeling of it spreading inside him. “My job before yours. I’ll deal with the logistics of it. All you need to do is—”

“ _No plans over the phone. But it’s a deal_.”

The Poisoner hung up.

“Well?” Ichirou said, shoveling corn flakes into his mouth. “How’d it go?”

Nathaniel scowled at him, then swatted at his arm. “Wear your contacts before you get a migraine.”

Ichirou chewed on his cereals, squinting at him. He held a finger up, chewing, and swallowed before saying, “Fuck you.”

Nathaniel rolled his eyes. He picked his phone up from the counter, eyeing the six-minute marked duration of his conversation with the Poisoner, wondering why that whole conversation felt odd, wondering why suddenly, he was tired.

Most phone conversations these days did, even Kevin’s.

“Rou? What does the Poisoner look like?” Nathaniel asked, a bit out of things to say at the moment. Ichirou took his time, fishing his phone out of his pocket.

Nathaniel’s brain was a knot of thoughts and concepts, wondering if killing his father face-to-face was worth it, wondering if his father’s men would turn on him if he really does become the next Butcher.

“I can hear the cogs in your head turning,” Ichirou said, not looking up from his phone as he thumbed through photos. “We’re on a weekend off. Stop it.”

“Can’t,” Nathaniel drawled through a yawn. “It’s involuntary.”

Ichirou scoffed but aimed his phone screen in Nathaniel’s line of sight anyway.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: explicit murder/death

“ _Hey, babe. I’m calling. Again.”_ A sigh. This was the last voice message on a list, all of them spaced for every forty-five minutes in the near two-hour flight from South Carolina to New York, all from Kevin Day.

 _“I know you’re probably not gonna get this ‘til you land but I’m kind of panicking and hungover and the cell service in Columbia hasn’t failed me yet. Please._ Please _just call him when you land, he’s driving me to drink more and it is_ not _helping._ ”

JFK International was busy that weekend. Local flights ran as early as ten, and he’d gotten there within the allotted ETA. The bags on the conveyor belt putted along.

He tried to keep his eye out for his own, too conscious of the fact that he had around 270 grams of wolfsbane and 16 ounces of strychnine stashed inside bottles of shampoo and rubbing alcohol and he didn’t want to seem suspect to airport security. In his back pocket was a Mace bottle full of highly-concentrated LSD.

His sweat pooled around his temple. He leaned his phone away from his ear and wiped his forehead against his arm before putting the phone back between the crook of his shoulder and his ear.

“ _… anyway, I might have left my jersey jacket by your bed yesterday?”_ He knew. He was wearing it this exact second and it smelled exactly like it did when Kevin took it off _._

There was a tone of panic in Kevin’s voice when he said, “ _Does he have access to your place over the weekend or… You know what, never mind. Nicky says I should probably go take a nap. I’m gonna try that. Text me if you land and_ speak to your brother, _Aaron. See you._ ”

The message cut off.

Aaron scrolled through his messages, snorting at all five lengthy voice messages Kevin left him. He made a mental note to listen to all of them while he gave Kevin a quick ‘ _just landed_ ’ and an extra ‘ _my keys are under the mat_ ’ before going through his contacts and calling Andrew.

The line clicked through at the first ring.

“Are you guys still in Columbia?”

There was a slight pause, the crinkle of something that sounded suspiciously like a chip bag. “ _Sure, brother dearest. Some guys are definitely in Columbia_ ,” Andrew replied, which meant that he was definitely not in Columbia.

Aaron sighed, and started walking. He caught the bright orange tag on his bag putter down the long conveyor. “Andrew, don’t touch anything in my fridge unless you want to be peaky in a few hours.”

“ _Ooh_ ,” Andrew crowed. His medication made conversations obnoxious with the petty way he kept posturing. They were on the phone, for fuck’s sake. “ _Was that a_ threat _, Michael?_ ”

Aaron rolled his eyes, bending over to grab his duffel, shifting to switch his phone to the other ear. “No, I mean it. Half of the things in that fridge is for jobs. If you want food, I’m pretty sure Coach Wymack has leftovers two floors down and will not guarantee you certain death.”

Andrew continued his crinkling on the other end of the line. “ _But that’s where all the fun is._ ”

Aaron let out a frustrated sigh and fumbled around his bag for his headphones, and plugged it into his phone. He looked through his contacts again, and looked at the logs for _Neil_.

One unread message.

‘ _i’m gonna be waiting at the cafes by arrivals. i’m the dude wearing the number four ravens jersey jacket._ ’

Aaron gave that a thoughtful hum, while Andrew could hear him perfectly. “ _What is it_?” Andrew asked, curious as he usually was when he was medicated.

“Who’s number four on the Ravens? Edgar Allan U,” Aaron asked, making his way towards the restaurant areas.

“ _I don’t like pop quizzes, Aaron_ ,” Andrew quipped. “ _What if I didn’t study?_ ” A gasp. “ _What if I fail the test!_ ”

“Joseph.”

Andrew didn’t dignify that with a response.

Aaron shouldered past people, practically jogging with the way he was rushing to just get this hunt over with. The restaurant area was packed with people, and it was hard to get a good look on who was wearing red and black.

Andrew continued to be obnoxious while Aaron headed towards the cafés. “ _Hey so, Nicky got hit on last night and guess what?_ ”

“He didn’t get laid,” Aaron deadpanned. It was the same every Friday, Aaron didn’t understand why Andrew always had to make fun of it. “Andrew, just because you get laid every now and then doesn’t give you leeway to laugh at Nicky’s blue balls. We’re kind of part of the reason why he’s getting blue balls.”

“ _Ew, when did you get boring. I’m not the one making him stay here._ ”

He spotted red and black by one of the outside booths. Auburn hair, black and red jacket, tight white shirt, and tight black jeans. The guy was pretty much magazine cover, limited edition _sleek_ , and Aaron couldn’t believe this guy wanted someone in prison dead.

What was his damage?

“Listen, ’Drew, I gotta go,” Aaron said. He avoided people who weren’t watching where they were going. Andrew seemed as if he was just about to say something, but then Aaron hung up.

Just as soon as he did, his phone buzzed in a new text.

From Kevin.

‘ _i’m at coach’s, i’m pretty sure J beat me to your place. where’s my jacket???  bc if it was in there, he’d have ran down here already, causing a scene._ ’

Aaron paused right as Neil had noticed him. Neil waved at him, but Aaron gestured for him to wait.

He turned on the camera and snapped a picture of his hand swallowed by the orange jacket sleeve and sent it. Then, he pocketed his phone, and slid into the booth across from Neil.

Neil blinked, then looked at the number at the side of Aaron’s arm. The amount of emotions going through his face was endlessly amusing to Aaron.

“That’s… Is that really Kevin’s or is it campus merch?”

Aaron shrugged. He was aware that his impassiveness was throwing Neil off, and that, too, was amusing to him.

“Right. Just that… you’re not really on the team so I thought... Uh, yeah,” Neil looked sheepish. “Business. I have security and passage covered. I have your attire in the car. You have your… weapons?”

Aaron patted his duffel where it laid on the side. Neil took this to stride and continued. Aaron held his tongue on the fact that they were in a public place, talking about things that shouldn’t be discussed in public contexts. If anyone was listening in, Aaron hadn’t spoken yet.

“I have people inside the facility that will make sure you’re not suspect to anyone. Mostly on cams, but only within the allotted time, so we have to do this quick.”

“I guess the mob really can reach anywhere,” Aaron taunted, the panicked look that crosses Nathaniel’s face briefly after the statement serving to fuel his assholery.

When Nathaniel realized what Aaron was doing, he shook his head. “You twins are alike, I suppose.”

“You say that like you’ve never met him,” Aaron stated. Andrew’s manic state was a far cry from his sober behavior, but he and Aaron could not have been more different.

Nathaniel shrugged, “I meant that you like starting shit.”

Aaron was easily bored of this conversation.

“You don’t want any coffee?” Nathaniel asked, moving to stand up from his seat.

Instead of answering, Aaron stood and led them out of the crowded area.

* * *

 

The mission was going well.

According to their plan, Nathaniel was to wait in the motel and monitor the facility through the cameras. Two stars and a bearable internet connection was really all they needed. On one laptop, he had access to every security camera that led from the entrances to Nathan’s cell.

Aaron walked down the hall, decked out in full security uniform, followed in by one of the people Nathaniel bribed into helping. Nathaniel could hear muttering from inside the hall, from what the security camera audio could pick up, but it didn’t start sounding like words until he heard Nathan shout at Aaron’s retreating form, “ _Listen, greenie, how do I know this isn’t poisoned?”_

Nathaniel hated being about an hour away from where this was happening. He wanted to get in there. Just the sound of Nathan’s voice made him feel like he was going to shoot up a corpse. Preferably Nathan’s. His hands shook on the table.

“ _I ask that every time I get coffee in this place,_ ” Aaron shouted back. “ _Eat up. If it was poisoned, I’d be doing you a favor_.”

He backed away from his laptop and went to tidy up the clutter around the motel room. Aaron had discarded most of his clothes and put them in a pile on his bed when he got into disguise this morning. Nathaniel went to fold those. He laid them neatly by the foot of the only bed in the room and sighed.

Maybe he should turn on the TV.

From the lack of clattering coming from the cell, Nathaniel assumed that the poison just got into Nathan’s system about a minute ago. It was in enough increments to have no taste in tacky water and food but enough to cause a fatal reaction. Then it was a thirty-minute race from Sing Sing to Nyack Medical.

Nathaniel couldn’t help the involuntary sneer in the back of his mind, mocking his father for putting his walls down so easily. He’d expected a scuffle in there, something that would catch the guards’ attention, maybe, that would require Aaron to go inside the cell and spill enough wolfsbane on Nathan to incapacitate him.

But Nathan had eaten the food.

The mission was going well.

He took another deep breath to get himself together.

He was too ready for this. The plan was too clear-cut. They had contingencies for road blocks, contingencies for the Malcolm twins and Jackson, contingencies for Nathan not ingesting the poison.

He picked up his phone and went to redial his last call. The phone rang, rang, rang, then clicked through.

“ _Neil?_ ”

It was Kevin. Nathaniel tried to blink the stinging in his eyes away, taking slow breaths.

“Kevin, hey, sorry, I didn’t mean to call you out of the blue,” Nathaniel said, his eyes glued to the security camera footage but his mind further away. “I, um, yeah.”

Their calls were usually in French. Maybe that was the reason why Kevin asked, “ _What happened, are you okay? Where are you?_ ”

Maybe he shouldn’t have taken this assignment. Maybe he should have just handed this over to Aaron, assisted where he could. He was too close to the target, too desperate to have him killed, desperate enough to want to be sloppy.

“I’m, uh, I’m at Nyack right now. New York. I’m on an assignment and I don’t think I should be.”

“ _New York. That’s… that’s some fucked up coincidence right there. Unless… Wait, hey—knock it off!_ ”

There was some shuffling on the other end of the line, some muffled voices, the words _give it to me_ pass around between gibberish.

There was a sound that was familiar to Nathaniel: the sound of nails clicking against the phone when it’s passed between people.

“ _Nathaniel!_ ”

It was Andrew.

“ _Hey,_ parlez-vous Allemand _?_ ” The words were right, but the pronunciation was probably mangled on purpose. “ _That’s the word for German, right? I need some privacy from Monsieur Asshole over here_.”

In the background, he could hear Kevin shouting expletives and other variations of _give it back_. Nathaniel blinked. “Uh, yeah, I can speak German.”

“ _That’s good,”_ Andrew said in German, barely even hesitating. “ _So, can you explain to me why my brother is there with you and if I should be preparing my funeral suit?_ ”

Shit, okay, Andrew knew. He could account for that because, well, he and Aaron were related.

So, Nathaniel replied, “I asked him to do a job with me and, no, he’ll be fine. I’m looking at him right now.”

Technically.

“ _It better stay that way, Wesninski, or else I’m gonna castrate you and mail your balls to the Moriyamas. Not to the rat though, because he would just_ love _to have your balls on display. I mean the big ones. You think mob bosses have ever had balls as a meal before? That’s kind of Grecian tragedy, right?_ ”

“Jesus.”

There was more shifting at the other end, a scuffle Nathaniel couldn’t see. Away from the receiver, Andrew said firmly in English, “ _Don’t touch me_.”

Then, a silence.

Nathaniel rubbed at his chin. “Andrew?”

“ _Present_.”

“How much do you know?”

“ _I know enough._ ”

Shouting began reaching the receiver, mostly Kevin’s.

The call dropped.

Nathaniel settled his phone on his lap and considered it. He considered that and the sudden settled feeling in his stomach, like the call had somehow brought him down from his anxiousness earlier.

Not that the call wasn’t a cause for concern though.

Like, how much did Kevin tell Andrew? Should it be considered a concern? Should he assume that, if Andrew knew, the whole team knew? Even Coach Wymack? The Foxes were little more than a group of civilians. It would be fatal for them if they let out secrets that should never be let out, just to spite Riko.

It wouldn’t just mean the suspension of an entire Exy team or a college.

It could lead to death.

How much did Kevin tell them?

He might be getting a little ahead of himself though. After all, who would believe a group of juvenile rejects at the end of the food chain that the best Exy team in the NCAA leagues was in some mafia conspiracy?

But media focus was going to get them in trouble. There was going to be a huge turn meeting in a few months, and that meant that any and all non-sports network cameras should be tuned into the Ravens, not the Nest. If the rumors hit the mainstream media, it would all be under question.

Nathaniel rubbed at his chin, his eyes still on the footage. Lord Moriyama was getting more impulsive as time went on and his sickness got worse. This would not end well.

Movement from the footage caught his eye. A stretcher being brought in.

Nathaniel stood up and rushed at the table as Aaron, cuffed to the stretcher, escorted Nathan out of the hall. Nathaniel tracked their trek as they moved from Nathan’s cell to the back entrance, where the ambulance had been waiting.

His calm dripped and melted back into anxiety, the trembling in his hands back in full force.

The mission was going well.

Nathaniel took a deep breath and hung his head low, trying to calm himself down. When he looked up at the screen, the ambulance was gone.

He had to look at what he was doing, one action at a time. He refused to let his anxiety numb him into hesitating. He had to do this.

He was grabbing his coat, then the keys to the room and to his car, and pocketing it with his phone.

He was walking to his car, getting in, and checking to see if he had all his equipment in the back seat.

He was driving at a reasonable speed, and he was going to kill Nathan.

* * *

 

Aaron handed Officer Jones a glass of water. Officer Jones thanked him as he went across the room to the side of the perp’s bed that had the IV tube.

After drinking almost half of the glass, Jones put it down by the bedside table, leaning in close from the chair he was sitting in. “Look at this ugly mug,” he said. “Them high types never really look like they’d pull this kind of shit, do they?”

Aaron could argue with that. Nearly anyone could pull off whatever Nathan Wesninski did. Assaulting an officer, aggravated murder, sexual assault, possession of illegal firearms; and that was barely scratching the surface. Nathan Wesninski, The Butcher of Baltimore, father, and target of the guy Aaron was working with, was more than just the serious bastard he was reported as.

He was a mob boss that earned his way up, and considering the Moriyamas' track record, it was definitely something.

He didn’t look half-bad either. Aaron could see where Neil got the whole limited edition look from. “He’s not _that_ ugly,” he commented.

This got him an odd look from Jones.

“He’s a murderer, man.”

“Yeah, and?”

Jones sighed. Likely, he’d forgotten who he was speaking to. He picked up his glass of water and drank all of it in one go.

Officer Jones leaned back in his seat, his brows furrowed and his blinking lethargic. Aaron watched carefully as the police officer slowly succumbed to the small enough dose of Propofol he’d snatched from the OR earlier.

When he was sure Jones was out cold, Aaron retrieved the medical gloves from his breast pocket and snapped them on. He grabbed the syringe in his pocket, then the Mace bottle from his belt.

He put those down the table and set to work.

There was a knock on the door. Once, then twice. Just as he and Neil had agreed on.

“Come in,” Aaron said, giving the open door a quick glance.

Neil ducked in, decked in scrubs and wearing a surgical mask, and locked the door behind him. One of his hands were raised to show either how much of an asshole he was or to show that he was wearing surgical gloves too. He looked like any other doctor’s assistant, except the large messenger bag was not really part of the attire.

“Security cameras off?” Aaron asked.

“Yeah.”

“Grab the gun.”

Neil made his way over to Officer Jones, plucking the gun out of his side holster and started putting Jones’ prints on them.

Aaron busied himself with the bottle of Mace. He’d premixed the wolfsbane, LSD, and strychnine earlier before the mission and this should be enough to have Nathan overdosed within the ten minutes Neil injected it into the IV.

When that was done, Aaron put the capped syringe down by the foot of Nathan’s bed. He was reaching out for the Colt when he noticed Neil looking fixated at the sight of his own father in bed.

With that one look, part of Aaron began to doubt this assignment, if only because there was a certain distinction between an aggrieved look in the eyes and a disturbing smile crinkling the side of someone’s eyes, and Neil was teetering over to the latter side of that distinction.

“Gimme the gun,” Aaron said, and Neil easily relented the gun to him.

Aaron grabbed Nathan’s right hand from across the bed to cover the gun up with his prints too. When that was done, he put the gun down next to the syringe.

“Neil. The suppressor,” Aaron said. Oddly, it felt like he was doing everything.

 _This asshole better show up for that favor_ , he thought to himself.

Neil snapped out of his trance, then set the messenger bag down on the bed. Aaron made sure not to comment on the trembling in Neil’s hands.

Neil procured a suppressor, albeit a very wet one. He made sure to show Aaron wear he put it inside the bag, smart enough not to put it down on the bed. Neil shifted something else inside the bag, then pulled out a pillow.

“Do you have the adrenaline?”

Neil nodded.

Aaron left that alone, then went to turn off the cardiac monitor, and the other beeping shit that might alert a nurse in case they woke Nathan up. At this point, the only thing they’d hear would be the clanking of the cuffs by Nathan’s wrist.

Aaron looked over his shoulder, glancing at the doors, then at Neil. “Extra syringe?”

“Got it.” Neil held up the syringe.

“Okay. You know what to do?”

Neil nodded.

“Tell me.”

“I stab him with the adrenaline to wake him up, beat him to make it look like there was a struggle, shoot him. If he tries anything else, I stab him with the poison.”

“No knives, no spitting, no sweat. Got it?”

“Got it.”

Aaron nodded, then started arranging the tables and chairs to look like there’d been a struggle.

Setting up crime scenes was a new thing for Aaron, but he wasn’t averse to them back when he started. He just knew how to elaborately set them up now. Cop shows and thriller novels aside, Andrew had been leaving around more case work once he and Aaron got to the agreement to respect each other.

(He knew it was deliberate, but Andrew never did require gratitude.)

Once done with that, he grabbed the gun from the bed. He swung once, hit Jones hard enough in the face to have his lip bleed. He leaned down and grabbed Jones’ hands, careful not to wince as he broke a few fingers.

He turned around to grab the suppressor. He made sure to shake it out in the bag. When the suppressor was on, he took the pillow and went back to Jones.

He pressed the pillow hard against Jones’ front and pressed the gun against it. Taking the safety off, he shot once, wincing a little at the water that came out with the recoil, then twice more, never in the same place.

He hoped to God no one would hear the suppressed gun firing off inside a hospital room.

Aaron waited for one minute, two minutes, listening intently for rushed footsteps. Despite that, the hospital continued to bustle with activity outside Nathan’s room, so Aaron wiped the gun off on his shirt and stared down at Jones.

He leaned forward and pulled Jones out of the chair, dropping him haphazardly on the floor.

It was when the blood started pooling around the body that Aaron noticed that Nathan’s bed was suspiciously quiet.

He sighed. “If I look and your dad’s still not awake, I’m going to do it myself, do you hear me?”

Nothing.

Aaron took a deep breath and turned around.

Neil was exactly as Aaron had left him, but with the syringe full of adrenaline in his hand. Aaron told himself that this was exactly like being the only person being productive in a group project but the look of distant consideration on Neil’s face made him pause.

If he were a more empathetic person, Aaron would have felt something for Neil having been assigned to murder his own father. As it was, he couldn’t really care less. He just wanted this done, he wanted to turn his phone on and call Andrew or Kevin, maybe even Nicky.

He fiddled with the Colt and put the safety back on, haphazardly throwing the gun back on the bed.

Neil jolted, moving away from the gun, fast, then glared at Aaron. “What if the safety wasn’t on?”

Aaron gave him a look. “Just fucking kill him already. I will leave you here if a nurse comes in and finds the dead pig and the gun on the bed.”

Neil didn’t dignify that with a response.

Aaron gave an exasperated sigh. “Look, man, do you want me to do it for you? Because you could have said so. I would have done this entirely by myself. You’re going to do me favors anyway.”

“Favor,” Neil muttered.

“What?”

“You said ‘favors’ but I only agreed to do one.”

Aaron rolled his eyes, “Well, if you have enough brain capacity to be a total wiseass, pick up the goddamn gun.”

When Neil still didn’t move, he trudged over to Nathan’s left side, shoving Neil aside so that he could reach for the IV needle. He grabbed the adrenaline from Neil’s hands, then held it up to the light. He pushed out a few more drops (the dosage looked like it could put Nathan into cardiac arrest before they could set this up and bruise him while his blood was still pumping), and jammed it into the hole left behind by the IV.

“What if he shouts?” was Neil’s anxious question.

Aaron didn’t know why he bothered talking chemicals with this guy before the mission began. He clearly wasn’t listening.

Aaron was busy putting the cap back onto the syringe when Nathan gasped awake, arms and legs struggling against his restraints, the cuffs clinking on the metal of the bed frame. His eyes were wide open, as was his mouth. He stared straight at Neil.

Neil stroke fast, punching his father in the face. Gone was his look of hesitance, replaced by what Aaron could only consider as murderous intent.

He’d consider being more disturbed by this if they weren’t running on a time limit.

Neil punched again, the other cheek this time. Then, he grabbed Nathan’s right arm and squeezed, his knuckles turning white. Nathan gasped, loud, and Aaron grabbed at his chin, pushed his mouth shut. He kept it firm enough to hold Nathan through it, but loose enough that he wouldn’t risk bruising Nathan’s face.

Neil was taking too long with that arm, so Aaron took the moment to say, “Stop.”

When Neil let go of his father’s arm, Aaron pointedly glanced at the gun and pillow. “In the gut.”

Neil complied, and while he was at it, Aaron looked down at Nathan, made him face his son. Aaron leaned down to whisper, “ _Look at what you made_.”

Neil shot Nathan in the gut, once. The white sheets were fast to stain, and Aaron could only watch with fascination as it spread from that one point of contact.

Neil took off the suppressor, then put the gun into Nathan’s hand, the one pushing down on his own wound. His face was severe and daunting, his gaze icy as he watched the life trickle out of Nathan’s eyes. The silence in the hospital room was full of tension as Nathan’s panting died out.

Neil turned and dropped the suppressor back into the bag, started packing their equipment. Aaron grabbed the poison syringe, capped, and gave it to Neil to keep in the bag, then went to turn all the beeping shit back on.

They left the crime scene as it was.

At the airport, after showering and changing back into his own clothes, Aaron could still hear the flatlining cardiac monitor in his ears, feel Jones’ fingers cracking under his, and see the blood slowly staining the bed sheets.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ravens vs foxes

Jean put his helmet and gloves down on the bench, watching the way Riko’s indifferent face slipped into his media smile from across the room.

“This is Rumi Harada taking you live to speak to the captain of the Edgar Allan University Ravens, Riko Moriyama. Hey, Riko, good evening.”

“Good evening, Rumi, long time no see.”

Jean averted his eyes, and slowly stood from the benches to slip away.

He ducked into the damp shower rooms, his eyes peeled for any sign of movement under orange stalls. Search unfruitful, he took a deep breath, then rushed out of the showers, careful not to slip on wet tile.

He navigated through white-walled halls, trying not to be overwhelmed by the pops of color coming at him. He wasn’t conscious for most of their flight earlier, and the trip from the airport to the stadium was quick, so he hadn’t done much sight-seeing.

He found the home team locker room quickly. This stadium wasn’t as grand as the Nest, and it was friendlier to visitors. He knocked twice on the door and waited.

The door swung open, flooding the hall with noise from inside the home team’s locker room. There was shouting, someone yelling “ _I’m not touching that ever in my life, get it away from me,_ ” followed by laughter, and Jean was suddenly face-to-face with Coach Wymack.

Jean fumbled a little as he stepped back, averted his eyes. “May, um, may I please speak with Kevin for a moment?”

There was more laughter from inside the locker room, and Jean continued to look at anything else except for the way Wymack stared at him intently. Was his accent too deep? Was it because Jean was from the other team?

“Are you here to taunt my team or what?” Wymack asked bluntly.

Jean opened his mouth to answer, but Wymack was already leaning back into the locker room and shouting for Kevin at the top of his lungs. Jean flinched, and was relieved that no one saw him do so.

At Wymack’s shouting, the room plunged into silence before roaring back to max volume, like the breaking and ebbing of waves across his ears. Footsteps bound toward the doors.

Kevin was looking over his shoulder, looking a little peppy and excited. He turned a questioning look to Wymack, and when his eyes found Jean and he frowned.

Jean tried not to feel hurt by that.

“What are you doing here?” Kevin asked in French, immediately anxious at the sight of Jean. “If the Master had caught you, you’d have been caned. Jean, get back to your team.”

Jean was just about to reply when he was cut off by yet another shouting Fox.

“Hey, hey! I hear a change in language. Who’s behind door number one? Is it Wesninski? Kevin, share!”

Minyard was grinning, a little strained at the eyes, when he poked his head behind Kevin’s arm. He looked at Jean, and suddenly his grin turned… petulant, so to speak.

“Jean Valjean! Here to show some camaraderie to us measly ex-cons? Paying a visit to 24601?”

Wymack scratched his cheek with the corner of his clipboard, “May be stretching the _Les Mis_ references there, Minyard.”

“Nonsense, Coach.”

Kevin sighed. “Shut up.”

Minyard laughed, but Kevin seemed undeterred. _If Kevin had pulled that with Riko, he wouldn’t have been as lucky_ , Jean thought. He kept it to himself. He wasn’t going to pull another scene like at the banquet, not this deep into Fox territory.

Kevin gave him a gesture to talk. Jean nodded. In French, he asked, “Have you seen Neil?”

“ _Non, monsieur_ ,” Minyard replied, accent was deliberately shitty. “I could understand that _._ Why would we have seen Wesninski?”

“You’re awful, Minyard,” Wymack remarked. Minyard shrugged.

Kevin’s brows furrowed. He made to grab at Wymack’s clipboard, but Wymack swatted his hand away and looked down at the list at the front of him.

 _The Master would not have been pleased with that kind of gesture as well_ , Jean thought. Like before, he kept it to himself, but by the sideway glance Jean got from Andrew, it was likely it was evident on his face anyway.

Wymack slipped the paper off the board and handed it to Kevin, his face unreadable.

Kevin looked up from the list, confused. Jean supposed, in his confusion, he forgot to answer in French. Jean knew how that was. “He’s not on the starting lineup. Did he say he wasn’t coming with?”

Jean shook his head, anxiety peaking. Where was he? Why wasn’t he in the lineup? Trying to keep his voice steady, he said, “The last I saw him was at the bus on the way here. He disappeared the moment we arrived. I don’t know where he is.”

Kevin considered this with a frown, then turned back around, into the locker room.

“Nicky, can you grab my phone for me?” Kevin shouted. Jean raised a brow at that. It seemed Kevin had learned quite a lot from the Foxes’ lack of indoor voice.

“Where is it?” Hemmick shouted back.

“In my duffel. There, right _there_. Toss it.”

“Oh, I can toss you, alri—”

Wymack spoke up. “Stow it, Hemmick. Just throw the phone at him. Aim for the face, maybe.”

“Can do, Coach!”

Hemmick missed, but Jean put it on the fact that Nicky Hemmick had shit aim. Kevin caught his phone with one hand, dialed a number, then turned back around.

“I already tried calling him,” Jean said weakly.

Kevin shook his head. When the call picked up, his voice changed for a happier tone. “Hey. Yeah, babe. The game hasn’t started yet. Yeah, later’s good. Hey, listen, is Neil with you, by any chance?”

Jean looked to Minyard, whose smile seemed to be getting less genuine by the minute, then at Wymack, who seemed used to not being in the loop with his players’ plans. Kevin’s shoulders were relaxed, and it was odd to see so.

Who the fuck was he talking to? He and Thea broke up months ago.

“Let me talk to him?” Kevin said.

Jean perked up at that. “He’s there? Who’re you talking to?”

Kevin ignored him. He put his phone out on speaker in front of him and promptly started shouting in French into the receiver instead. “Neil, where the fuck are you? There is a game in thirty minutes, and you are supposed to be in the starting lineup. Explain to me why you left West Virginia _with your team_ and didn’t show up to at least play for them. Even just a quarter half!”

“ _Look, Kev,_ ” Neil replied, voice tired. “ _I already told Tetsuji I won’t be there anyway._ ”

“Yeah, but did you tell Riko? Or Jean?”

“ _Well… No, but do I have to?_ ”

Kevin threw his hands up, “Yes, you have to, you’re the vice-captain and starting back liner of the team! Are you being obtuse on purpose?”

“ _Well, excuse me, number two. We can’t all be shitheads. Look, I’m kind of in the middle of something. Can this wait until I’ve killed an uncertain amount of people for your teammate’s brother? Which, by the way, kudos for dating him. Didn’t see that one coming until he literally showed up_ in your jersey _._ ”

“What?” Jean said.

Kevin flicked a look at Jean, eyes begging for him not to ask.

“ _Hey, Jean! Yeah, he’s dating Andrew’s brother. Isn’t that wild? Anyway, the Ravens can cool it, you know, the defense line is solid. The only thing you’ll be worried about is probably Kevin so, good luck and all that_.”

Minyard elbowed Kevin’s torso, hard. “I heard my name, what did he say?”

Kevin took a deep breath, nostrils flaring as he glared down at Minyard. Still in French, he said, “Do _not_ answer that, Neil. And if you say anything about the Foxes again, I’m gonna—”

“ _You’ll what, beat me to death with an Exy racquet? Oh, you know what? Not worth it. Give the phone to Jean, and take me off loud speaker._ ”

Jean held his hand out for it.

Kevin sighed and put the phone down in Jean’s outstretched hand. In English, he said, “Alright, fine. But stay in here so that I know you’re not gonna bring it to Riko.”

And with that, he walked away.

Jean put the phone to his ear, stepping inside the Foxes’ locker room. Andrew gave him a once-over before walking off with that infuriatingly fake grin.

Wymack let the door swing shut. He gave Jean one look and said, “I’ll tell you if it’s five minutes before warm ups so you have enough time to go back, okay? Don’t need an answer. Hurry up.”

Jean nodded. As Wymack walked away, he called out, “Thank you!” Then fumbled, reverting to English, “Uhm. Thanks, Coach.”

Wymack threw a hand over his shoulder to gesture _don’t bother_. Jean leaned back against the doorway.

“Neil, you have to come back for a half,” Jean muttered in panicked French, keeping his eyes to the floor. “Maybe not even a full half, just show up.”

“ _You’ll be fine, Jean. If Riko hits you, I’ll hit back for you._ ”

“That’s just it though. I don’t want to get hit, Neil. So just come back before he notices.”

A sigh, then loud rattling from the other side. Jean frowned, bit his lip.

“Was that a gun?”

“ _Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to. And,” A sigh. “Okay, can you get me a message to Riko? Before he tries anything?_ ”

“Tell him yourself.”

“ _This is Andrew’s brother’s phone. I turned my phone off because I wanted to avoid the exact rant Kevin just gave me._ ”

“Tough luck,” Jean sneered. “Not my problem.”

In English, Neil said, “ _You’re insufferable_.”

“Oh, _I’m_ insufferable,” Jean said, aware that his voice was getting louder, his words getting faster. Speaking English was out of the question, at this rate. “I’m not the one who ditches every time we have an event like this. Do you know how much I’ve had to cover for you? How many beatings I’ve been given because of you? Just because you live outside of the Nest doesn’t mean you’re not part of Riko’s court, and someone has to spot for you.”

Neil’s voice was serious when he asked, “ _What_.”

Jean’s breath hitched. When he glanced up, he saw Reynolds and Walker averting their gazes. He took a deep breath.

He hadn’t meant to let that slip.

“ _Jean. Have you been getting punished because of me?_ ”

“It’s nothing,” Jean said. “Don’t tell him anything about it. I didn’t tell you anything.” He looked up when he saw Coach Wymack trudging back to the doorway, tapping at his wristwatch.

Jean nodded, then made gestures at the phone. “Just get back here, I have to go.”

“ _Jean—_ ”

“Later, Nathaniel.”

He hung up.

He gave Kevin’s phone back to Coach Wymack and made his way back to the away team lockers. When he got there, Riko was talking to the Master, holding a list similar to what Kevin had been holding earlier.

Jean kept his mouth shut and grabbed his helmet and gloves from where he’d left it on the bench.

* * *

 

On Aaron’s advice, they’d walked to the Foxhole Court to avoid campus traffic. The parking lot was expansive but crowded as people dressed in orange and black alike started filing out of the stadium. Aaron kept his head down, his cap firmly in place.

“I’m not going in there,” Aaron said, but he kept up with Nathaniel’s pace anyway.

“Sure.”

“This is entirely unnecessary, I’m just going to head out. Keep the shirt, I don’t care,” Aaron said, trying to shrug off Nathaniel’s hand pushing at his shoulder when they finally got out of the crowded lounge and into the halls. “Don’t touch me.”

Nathaniel dropped his hand. He looked up and down the halls, spotting janitors and a few fans, before crossing and pushing at the locker room doors. “I’ll take like five minutes, Aaron, I swear. I just don’t want to have to bring this thing back to my dorm and gift it to you for Christmas or whatever.”

“No one told you to do that,” Aaron said, following him into the locker room anyway. “I don’t want that top back.”

Nathaniel glanced down at the black button up and made a face at Aaron. “It’s a nice top, what are you talking about?”

“It’s old and I can’t fit in it anymore. It’s yours. Can I go now? People are going to see me in here and think I’m my brother and ask me questions or whatever.”

“I didn’t ask you to follow me in here, man, I just told you to wait while I change into a shirt that smells less like a goddamn bouquet,” Nathaniel retorted. He walked around the locker room and found his duffel shoved into one of the corners.

He grabbed the first shirt he could get ahold of then sat down to undo the buttons. Aaron turned to look out down the hall, then fished his phone out of his pockets. Nathaniel appreciated the privacy.

“Three texts from Kevin, all from like, five minutes ago,” Aaron announced. “Apparently, Foxes lost, but the Ravens were pretty sloppy. He wants me to tell you to go back to your team before anything happens to Jean.”

Nathaniel breathed a sigh, then shrugged out of the Aaron’s shirt. Slipping into his jersey was a relief after the whole stakeout and having to melt five bodies in a tub. When his arm brushed against his nose, he could still smell smoke and bleach under the soft smell of the body wash from Aaron’s bathroom and the laundry detergent from Aaron’s shirt.

He rooted around his duffel, then grabbed his phone. “Scores?”

“Twelve-eight.”

Nathaniel winced. Riko was sure to be in a rage at this point.

He had to check on Jean.

On their way out of the stadium, Aaron kept throwing the shirt back at Nathaniel, phone to his ear as he talked to his cousin about where to pick him up for their post-game party plans.

Apparently, Foxes didn’t need a solid reason for alcohol.

“I can give you a lift, if you need to get somewhere,” Nathaniel offered, catching the shirt again. “Maybe I can swindle the rental dude to get the car back.”

Aaron opened the door and waited until Nathaniel was through before keeping pace.

When they were out in the chilly night, Nathaniel threw the shirt back. Aaron caught it, still going on about his plans, “Ignore that. Are you at Sweetie’s? I can take the bus.”

“Suit yourself,” Nathaniel said loudly.

Aaron threw the shirt back at him in a futile attempt to shut him up. Nathaniel caught it from hitting his face, sticking his tongue out. “Don’t say I didn’t do you any favors, asshole.”

They parted by the parking lot, and it took Nathaniel at least ten yards and not a Minyard in sight before he realized that he still had Aaron’s shirt.

With a frustrated sigh, he shoved the thing into his duffel and made a beeline for the Ravens’ bus.

The interior was practically drenched in darkness, the curtains unnecessary since it was already night time outside. Half the team was asleep, and half were up and talking in a measly hush. When they noticed Nathaniel getting on, the whole bus plunged into tense silence.

Nathaniel walked on, not caring much what they think they were going to say or do to him. Jean pointedly kept his gaze away from Nathaniel, and Nathaniel had to pretend he didn’t care about that either.

He was perfectly aware of Riko at his heels when he finally took a seat at the very back of the bus though.

Riko wasn’t menacing at all, standing over him. He was smug, his hair was mussed due to the shower he took, and Nathaniel was pretty sure those were Kevin’s old sweatpants he was wearing which, _gross_.

With some cheer, Riko said in Japanese, “You’ve got some balls to come back here after your disappearing stunt.”

“I was excused,” Nathaniel replied, in the same language, polite and smug. “I was out risking my life because your brother wanted someone dead. I don’t see why this is such a big deal to you.”

“We had a four-point gap,” Riko said bluntly.

“Yeah, and?”

Riko threw his hands up, “That was on you! You’re the vice-captain, you’re a starting back liner! Jean had to deal with that while you were away.”

Nathaniel scoffed, then looked at his phone. Aaron had forwarded the article of the scores to him, and apparently the Ravens had taken a hundred and fifty shots on the Foxes’ goal. Only twelve came through from Andrew. Kevin, Wilds, Gordon, and Smalls had to try and close the gap.

“Oh, don’t involve Jean in this, you slimy little prick, we both know that you don’t care if Jean had a hard time playing. We have twenty-four players and all of them go through you before they get recruited. You can’t guilt trip me into feeling sorry because I was doing my job, which, coincidentally, is more important than this goddamn sport. Get a fucking life.

“And, by the way, you won. You’re only getting your panties in a twist because you think they’re beneath you but guess what? They’re not. They just played the same game you were playing, and yeah, they might be the smallest and worst team in the leagues, but they still scored eight points on you. If anything, they’re kind of better than the Ravens. Kevin’s _really_ benefitting staying away from your neurotic ass, isn’t he?”

His phone hit the side of the bus, and Riko was already moving to make a grab at Nathaniel’s chin, but he was too slow. Nathaniel grabbed at Riko’s wrist, and pulled himself up, twisting it around Riko’s back. He was aware of Riko’s elbows hitting the backs of the seats behind him, aware of how the Ravens kept silent in front of them.

He pressed up against Riko and leaned down. “Don’t try me, Riko,” Nathaniel muttered against Riko’s ear, a grin splitting his face wide, reminiscent of the things his father and Lola had taught him. He pushed Riko forward and let go, watching Riko stumble to grab a seat for balance, arms flailing.

“Touch me again, and you’re gonna get what Kevin got.”

Riko glared up at him, murderous intent and a splash of fear and outrage. Nathaniel stared on back. “And if you ever think of touching Jean or planning to have someone else do it for you, you’re gonna get worse than that.”

Nathaniel turned and sat back in his seat, grabbing his phone again.

_

Halfway to the airport, Nathaniel got up and sat down beside Jean.

Jean didn’t acknowledge his presence, eyes firmly glued to the window. Nathaniel sighed, combing his hair back a little.

After a beat, Nathaniel said, “I had a job to do, Jean. I know it must have been rough holding the fort while I was gone.” He bit his lip, biting back all the reasons he had. He knew how reasoning always sounded like the one apologizing was making excuses for themselves, no matter how valid the reason.

To Jean’s ears, everything probably sounded like a reason.

“How can I make it up to you?”

Nothing.

Nathaniel sighed. He didn’t know why he bothered. This wasn’t the first fight they’ve had, but this was, by far, the biggest, and he couldn’t even say he was genuinely sorry.

Maybe what should have made him feel sorry was the aggrieved tone in Jean’s voice earlier, the fearful admission of _I don’t want to get hit, Neil_ , and the angry way he said Nathaniel’s real name for the first time after four years before hanging up.

Or maybe it should have been the thought of Jean having to keep the abuse to himself for however long.

But it was a choice between his job and his athletic scholarship and the only jam on it was Riko doing something brash.

Nathaniel wasn’t sorry for skipping out on the game at the wrong time, he was just sorry that it came with consequences. It was like every move was wrong, when it came to this.

“Right, I’ll just… leave you alone.” Nathaniel stood up and made to go back to his own seat, bracing himself against the seatback as the bus slowed down. By then, most of the Ravens have dozed off in exhaustion, and most of the ones awake were up front.

When Nathaniel settled back in his seat, he startled at the way Jean braced himself against the seatback, frowning.

Nathaniel raised a brow at him. “Yes?”

Jean stared at him, unnervingly unreadable. Then, he said, “The next time you try that, tell me ahead of time.”

Nathaniel nodded. That was one thing he could apologize for. “Okay, I will. I’m sorry I didn’t.”

When Jean was about to sit down properly, Nathaniel said, “But I can do you one better.”

Jean paused, but didn’t turn.

“Weekend at my place. I have my cupboards stocked with food, I’ll buy us a game to play, maybe a movie to watch, and we don’t have to go to practice unless we need to be there. How’s that?”

Jean considered this, fiddling with his fingers on the leather top of the seatback. In a small voice, he said, “I’d like that.”

Nathaniel couldn’t help the loose breath that escaped his lungs, an involuntary laugh of relief. “Got it. We’ll get your things when we get home.”


	8. Chapter 8

It was entirely unfair of Nathaniel to just walk into the meeting room in loose jeans and an evidently old shirt while Ichirou had to endure life in an ironed suit. But it was 10 AM on a Monday and he had business hours while Nathaniel had nothing but Exy practice and classes to go to.

Okay, Ichirou didn’t miss college, so maybe Nathaniel deserved the lack of slacks. For now.

"Business or pleasure, Lord Moriyama?" Nathaniel quips in lieu of a greeting. The distant _ding_ of the elevators closing could be heard but otherwise, it was just him, Nathaniel, and a few armed guards that had come down South with Ichirou.

Instead of rising to the bait, Ichirou waves a hand to the files on the table. "Sit down, we're talking numbers."

Nathaniel sighed, his amused and loose state giving way to exhaustion as he sat down beside Ichirou, sliding the files towards himself and flipping through them. "Wesninski or second branch?"

"Both, if you could," Ichirou said. "Clients and allies have been upset about the supposed ‘power imbalance’ since you took Nathan’s reign. I’m pretty sure the Hatfords are spinning rumors on the mill about sabotage because we had Nathan taken care of on the hush. You should probably get on that. I’ve been trying to comb through to the roots and resolve it since Friday, but I guessed that you were busy."

Nathaniel nodded. "I’ll speak with Uncle Stuart. I could call him right now, if you want," he checked his watch, "It's around seven in the evening in England."

Ichirou shook his head. "He's in Beijing right now, dealing with the Triads. It's four in the morning."

"You just knew that info on hand," Nathaniel stated, sounding skeptic.

"No, I looked it up before you got here. I knew you were gonna say that," Ichirou admitted. Nathaniel rolled his eyes, but picked his phone up to set a reminder anyway.

Asshole.

Nathaniel eventually scrolled through his phone's notes, leaning over to show Ichirou the figures on certain key areas that the Wesninskis were dealing with. His notes on the Wesninski ledgers were concise and summarized so that only he could understand them, so Ichirou actually had to listen to him.

The Karimis continue to be peaceful, and seemed to have given a large enough donation in condolences. Nathaniel said, "The rest of them just sent emails instead, thank fuck. I don't actually want to get money, but the Karimis think it's funny to congratulate me for inheriting Nathan’s mess."

"You know, it kind of is funny, but I think they're congratulating you from finally being free of him," Ichirou pointed out.

Nathaniel nudged him with a hand at the shoulder, knowing that, with the guards by the elevators, it would be impractical to do anything too brash like a punch. One wrong move and Nathaniel could be suspected to maiming his own boss.

" _Congratulations, little Wesninski_ ," Nathaniel said in a Swedish accent as he scrolled through his phone. " _You've committed patricide._ "

Ichirou laughed, "Exactly."

"You're awful."

"I know. Anyway. Second branch stuff?"

Nathaniel extended his phone towards him, Excel spreadsheets highlighted for certain things. Ichirou bit back a remark about Nathaniel finally being consumed by the college movement, with Excel spreadsheets and presentations. To distract himself, he skimmed his eyes through the document.

"There's this," Ichirou reached around the other files on the table to point at the numbers, brows furrowing. "What's with the extra money spent on miscellaneous stuff? What do they spend that on again? Repairs, security? EAU pays for their travelling fees and food, so I’m sure that’s not it.”

Nathaniel’s expression sobered, either annoyed or serious. Ichirou could never tell. “Repairs, security, and then some. When I looked into it, apparently, Tetsuji’s been letting Riko spend money on other things.”

Oh, so annoyed.

When Nathaniel said _Riko_ , it sounded like he was swapping it out the last minute for some other expletive, and Ichirou couldn’t help the little defensive impulse inside him, despite having known that Riko had probably done whatever Nathaniel had accused him of. He staunched the impulse out before it could become something concrete.

“What other things?”

Nathaniel met his gaze, intense and icy. “He’s been paying goons to cause some shit for the players down in South Carolina specifically because Kevin hasn’t come back yet. He’s been paying them and the campus police off.  Vandalism, attempted overdoses and sexual assault, to name a few. One of the players already left because of it.”

Ichirou found a quick solution to all that trouble. “Then why not just bring Kevin back?”

Nathaniel gave him a look. “Because he broke Kevin’s hand when he realized that Kevin was better than him, and if Kevin so much as stays within a week in Riko’s reach, I’m afraid of what Riko would do next. You know, the only reason why I’m still alive and on his team right now, after all I’ve done to him to protect the rest of the team, is because I have a higher position than him and I can probably accidentally kill him.”

Well, this was news. Ichirou knew the bare minimum about what had happened to Nathaniel’s relationship with Riko and his teammates, but he’d never heard about the hand thing. If rumors of that reached the media, Evermore would be swarming with tabloid journalists and actual news outlets trying to get the drop on what’s the real deal.

“But he leaves most of your teammates alone,” Ichirou prompted, trying to get the conversation moving. Nathaniel rarely shook him out of his trains of thought, and it wasn’t helping their case.

Nathaniel shook his head. “No one’s safe down there, Rou. Least of all Jean. With Kevin gone and me being untouchable, the only thing standing between the public getting ahold of Riko’s abuse is Jean, and what’s crazy is, I don’t think Riko knows that, because if he can’t touch me, he’ll do whatever he wants to do to me to Jean.”

“Well, then, what about other things?” Ichirou said, looking back at Nathaniel’s phone. “This amount doesn’t seem to hold up just petty vandalism and the like.”

Nathaniel bit his lip, brows furrowed, then swapped out of the excel sheets to root around his voicemail instead.

When Nathaniel pressed play, Ichirou made to listen to the sound of his own brother’s voice talking to another person he called Judge Yoo.

“This is him rooting around a cold case from, give or take… seventeen years ago. He’s paid the judge to reopen the case so that he could find the perp and bring him over to South Carolina,” Nathaniel explained. He swapped out of the voicemail and showed Ichirou the purchase for a plane ticket. California to South Carolina, one-way ticket for the date today.

Nathaniel tapped at the screen. “If I’m getting this right, from my own look at this, he just deliberately planned a revenge plot to get at the only person he knows is keeping Kevin in South Carolina to scare Kevin into coming back. I found this whole thing through Tetsuji’s bank account withdrawals and asking around, and I don’t doubt a good detective couldn’t find their way there as well. This could ruin us.”

Ichirou nodded. It had a lot of potential to.

Part of him was painfully aware that Nathaniel had too much evidence on hand for this, suspicious that Nathaniel had been planning to tell him this all along. This had inferior motives written all over it, and Ichirou should probably care to ask about them.

But the other part of him knew that, even if it seemed like Nathaniel had been planning this all along, he wasn’t wrong to build up a case about it. His friends were getting cut down by the knees one by one in a twisted attempt to get back at one person who, according to Nathaniel, doesn’t seem to be planning to leave the safety outside of Riko’s reach at all. It was called for, even though Ichirou was related to him, to be this mad at Riko.

“You know what to do then,” Ichirou said, finally. Something inside him stirred at the words, pulling at his chest, but he pushed it down.

Nathaniel blinked. He locked his phone, then turned in his seat to face Ichirou properly, their knees grazing. “You do know how that sounds to me, right?”

Ichirou scoffed, years of having to cultivate a façade in front of his observant father making it sound genuine enough. The catch was: he couldn’t look Nathaniel in the eye when he said the next few words:

“Do I need to make it abundantly clear for you, Nathaniel? I’m assigning you to kill my brother.”

* * *

 

When the announcement came out, Neil was appointed captain that same day, and Jean was moved up to vice-captain.

“Practices continue as they should,” the Master said. His voice carried out easily around the locker rooms as the Ravens kept quiet. The last time someone said something while the Master was talking was years ago, and Jean could still hear the crack of the cane hitting Kevin’s knees.

There were pros and cons to assigning Neil his position, and Jean trusted the Master to know which Raven was worth which position, but Neil had the tendency to prioritize things above Exy and his team. Their game against the Foxes was a good example. With Riko and Kevin being raised around the game, they were in the best positions to take captaincy.

To adjust, Jean did his best to be a better vice-captain Neil ever could be, took the brunt of the work whenever Neil was doing something else. Jean found that Neil frequently disappeared during weekends to settle his work and was gone at odd times in the Ravens’ sixteen-hour days to attend his backup classes. Jean appreciated that he was still trying, sometimes texting Jean to check if the practices were going well, then sending in suggestions on how to improve their defense line.

They were weakening a bit on the offense line, so Jean had to push through with that, putting their subs and starters up to bat against Marcus, Louie, and Trini as much as possible, even so far as playing against them himself. The drills went as usual, and everyone’s aims were impeccable. In theory.

A week after the announcement, after their first mediocre game without Riko, the rooms under the Nest were subject to police investigation. People came and went, all of them addressed by the Master and Neil as detectives. Jean watched them root around his room, answered all the questions they wanted answered. Neil was given the same treatment. As was the Master.

They asked who had seen him last (Jean didn’t know), and who roomed with him (Kevin, but it’s been a year since), and what he had been last wearing (probably his own jersey, why didn’t they check the security cameras? The ones set up everywhere?)

Around the second week of the announcement, this week’s game marginally better than their last, the Ravens were relocated outside, given dorm rooms of their own. The Master didn’t care to explain why, but Neil was courteous enough to take Jean in as his roommate and told him.

“The detectives had to check security footage after you suggested it,” Neil said. “They had warrants for it and everything. Some of that footage was compromising.”

Jean blinked, sitting up from the couch. “The meeting rooms?”

Neil shook his head. “We don’t have security cameras in the meeting rooms or the lounge. Those areas are closed off because you should have authorization to get into the lounge and there’s no button for it. But they do have footage in the halls to the lockers and the living quarters. The nurse’s office included.”

What turned out to be a missing person’s case turned into a drug case pretty quick, or so Neil said. Jason, their goal keeper, was arrested by the end of that week. Every Raven was subjected to drug-testing.

When the Winter Banquet rolled around, all the Ravens crowded around the court parking lot and took the bus ride to Colorado silently. There were no pep talks this time around, and no restrictions either. The Master seemed to have laxed on the rule of who could bring who this time. That or Neil had done something to warrant this change of heart.

Jean actually had fun that night, catching up with Kevin and even managing to find a few friends in the Foxes’ defense line.

He didn’t see where Neil had gone for the duration of it, but he was there when the Master served a toast for ‘ _those who are with us this evening, doing it for those who are not,_ ’ his blue eyes looking over the crowd with an unreadable look on his face and an arrogant lift to his chin.

Riko was still missing.

* * *

 

He found Nathaniel at the edge of his dorm’s rooftop, smoking what seemed to be his third Marlboro stick for the night.

Ichirou walked up behind him, picking the packet up before Nathaniel could grab another. There was a folder underneath it, and he picked that one up too.

Inside, when he looked through it, were Wesninski personnel files, not-blacked out and complete with 2x2 pictures. There were lists of purchases made by crime groups that the Wesninskis had under their wing. There was a flash drive taped to the flap of the folder.

“What’s this for? And why call me here?”

Nathaniel took another drag, breathing smoke out into the cold November breeze blowing past them. It took him until Ichirou finally sat down by the edge with him for him to flick a look towards Ichirou.

“The FBI’s been rooting around the manor. They say I should approach them for witness protection because they found traces of poison in my father’s blood.”

Ichirou raised a brow at that. He didn’t think The Poisoner’s act would be caught so easily. Aaron’s work usually went ignored by the general populace. He supposed he shouldn’t have underestimated the federal investigators, despite the Moriyamas’ contacts inside the Bureau.

“Remember when I told you I didn’t want to be Nathaniel?”

Ichirou looked him in the eyes and remembered the vulnerable boy in the passenger seat of his car, anxious to kill his own father, afraid of what came after.

_I don’t want the name, or the killing, or the bribery. Everything._

He felt the weight of the folder on his lap and ran a hand over the front, understanding. “This is the restart button.”

Nathaniel sighed, reaching up to rub the balls of his hand against his eyes. “Talk me out of it, Rou, I know this is a stupid decision.”

Ichirou flipped through the file again as an excuse to avert his gaze from Nathaniel’s. “No, you were right to call me here for this. This isn’t your only copy, isn’t it?”

“What is this, amateur hour?” Nathaniel deadpanned.

Ichirou rolled his eyes. “Just making sure. And you called me here to either talk you out of it or encourage you and alert these groups first?”

Nathaniel nodded, at a loss for words for once.

“Well,” Ichirou sighed. “It’s not a stupid idea.”

Nathaniel gave him an incredulous look.

Ichirou shook his head. “Your father is indebted by name and blood. Bringing his empire down wouldn’t shake the foundations. You still should pay his debt yourself. What you’re doing is going to reflect on you more than it would on my family, and after my brother’s disappearance, another scandal away from Evermore would be prudent.”

Nathaniel nodded, “Yeah, yeah, of course.”

Ichirou canted his head to the side, pondering the expression Nathaniel had on his face. “You were thinking of this more personally?”

Nathaniel flicked a look towards him, then looked away to take a drag from his cigarette.

With a sigh, Ichirou said, “If you don’t go into witness protection and come up with this as a plea bargain, you’re still going to go under. You’re a Wesninski.”

“I said I didn’t want the name,” Nathaniel replied.

“A name change?”

“My friends call me Neil,” Nathaniel quipped, a wry twist to his lips. He threw his cigarette to the ground between his feet, stepping on it to put it out. “I’ve been up here thinking of a last name.”

“Got anything yet?”

“I don’t really care either way, but Josten’s a good name. It feels right.”

“Neil Josten,” Ichirou tried out. “Neil _Abram_ Josten?”

With a small smile, Neil said, “Yeah.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> christmas break part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for mentions of andrew's time at the hemmicks'. and a whole lot of implied murder

The eight-hour flight from London to South Carolina was peaceful, to say the least. None of his business contacts blew his phone up, Jean kept sending snaps of his European tour with Marcus, no news came from the hospital Lord Moriyama got admitted to, and he knew that, by the end of the line, he’d be spending a week in what’s become Kevin’s home in the past two years.

Part of Neil’s mind was anxious of what happened at the Minyards and Hemmick’s early Thanksgiving dinner, wondering if his help had been appreciated or not, even though he was aware how much of an unwanted gesture it was.

Part of it was focused on the letter hidden inside the front flap of his messenger bag.

Before he left London, Jean had given it to him to hand over to Kevin.

“I didn’t know we still lived in the nineties,” Neil quipped, stashing it inside his bag. “Letters? Don’t you have his number? I could give it to you, but I’m pretty sure he’s taken.”

Jean socked him on the shoulder, hard, but he was smiling. “That’s not funny. Just tell him I nabbed it from their room before the police found it. And don’t read it.”

Of course, Neil wasn’t going to fucking read it, he wasn’t stupid or intrusive. But he was curious. He still couldn’t think of what Kevin and Jean would possibly be hiding from him. Unless…

When the plane landed in Charleston International, it was nine in the evening in London, and Neil was bone tired. All that was keeping him going was the coffee he ordered on the plane and the fact that he still had to call Kevin and board a bus before passing out for the fourteen hour bus ride to Columbia.

Neil went through his contacts and called Kevin as he grabbed his luggage from the line, making his way towards the exit.

“ _Neil? Are you in Charleston?_ ”

“Yeah, I’m taking the bus to Columbia now. You said I was gonna stay with Ms. Winfield when I get there, right?”

“ _You, me, and Nicky. The Tower’s closed down for the holidays and Nicky didn’t want to be left alone with Aaron at Columbia_.”

Neil winced as he pushed through the crowd by the bus stop in front of the airport. “Harsh. How’re they holding up on that? Hemmick didn’t know, right?”

“ _They’re… I don’t know. Just, remember that Andrew’s a bad subject to bring up around Nicky, okay?_ ”

Neil fished his headphones out and jammed them in, pocketing his phone as the bus rolled in. “Yes, Mother Day. I will censor myself around your in-laws,” he teased. He mumbled an excuse me as he got on the bus.

“ _Neil_.”

Neil put change into the till and walked to the back of the bus, careful to keep his luggage off anyone’s toes. “I already said yes, Kevin. It’s not like Andrew or Exy are the only things I can talk to your friends about. Three of us are gonna be athletes there and you’re probably going to be the only one bringing it back to Exy.”

“ _Wow, and here I was checking up on you, asshole._ ”

“No, now you’ve got your facts wrong. I called _you_ , remember?”

“ _I’m never doing you any favors._ ”

“You know, you never did. You were doing Jean favors, not me, and I appreciate that because I also do Jean favors. Oh, and speaking of.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Jean gave me this letter to give to you, says he grabbed it from your room before the police could find it.”

Silence.

Neil fished his phone out of his pocket to check if Kevin cut off, but the call was still going. “Kevin?”

“ _Did you read it?_ ”

Neil made a face. “No. Jean told me not to, and it’s none of my business.”

“ _Thanks. Just, give it to me when you get here._ ”

“That was the plan.”

“ _Rest up. Nicky’s gonna sap all your energy_.”

Neil sighed. “I’m looking forward to it.”

* * *

 

Aaron tried not to startle when the bed dipped, stiffening when his sheets pulled up. He willed away any bad thoughts and memories, reminding himself that it was fine, he was safe, he was okay. He was not about to get shot in the stomach, and neither was he going to have to bash someone’s head in with a lamp. He was in his apartment, he was in his bedroom, he was safe.

“Whoops, I startled you. Sorry.”

Kevin ducked under the sheets, chuckling at Aaron’s sour face. His hair was a damp tangled mess, meaning he either had a run before getting here, came straight from the court or just recently took a shower.

Aaron was counting on him coming directly from the court.

He took Aaron in with a smile before sobering up at what was possibly a cold expression on Aaron’s face.

“I really am sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’m awake now.”

“Did you fall asleep in your binder again?”

Kevin leaned out of Aaron’s space as Aaron sat up, frowning at his torso. “No, idiot, that’s a sports bra. Don’t dispute my lack of tits, that’s just how it is.”

Aaron stretched his arms up, yawning, then tipped over back into his sheets. He felt Kevin’s hand rubbing at the side of his thigh in comfort, and Aaron let him do it long enough before he rearranged his legs to settle his feet on Kevin’s lap. Clearing his throat, Aaron said, “Isn’t the court locked on holidays?”

Kevin hummed. “The gym isn’t.”

“The grind never stops.”

“If that’s another one of your lame jokes, I’m leaving.”

“I didn’t even let you in here, trespasser.”

Aaron turned his head and found Kevin leaning down to press his nose to Aaron’s tummy.

Aaron laughed at the sour face Kevin pulled as he leaned away again. Incredulous, Kevin asked, “What’s—whiskey? Were you up drinking last night?”

Aaron nodded, propping his head up with one hand as he reached for Kevin’s left hand, linking their fingers together. “Darren and I were playing video games from afternoon until like, eight, I think. But he didn’t stay since he had to catch his flight to Singapore this morning. I stopped drinking at ten, but by two, the only thing I could do was brush my teeth and freshen up before bed so if I smell bad, that’s it.”

Kevin hummed again, tracing circles around the back of his hand.

Aaron watched the way the shade of the tree outside showered Kevin in equal parts shade and light. He pulled at his hand, catching Kevin’s attention. “Gimme a kiss.”

Kevin scrunched his nose up. “Brush your teeth first.”

Aaron let out a drawn-out sigh, then let go of Kevin’s hand to roll off the bed. “You’re so stingy after the gym.”

“It’s basic hygiene, Aaron. Also, I brought you breakfast so, do it fast.”

“I retract my statement, you’re considerate after the gym.”

“Better.”

Aaron showered, brushed his teeth, and took his shot. He picked up whatever loose button-up shirt he found lying around and his pajama pants before making his way out of the bed room.

The food was already set out.

Nicky’s usual omelets and a few waffles he assumed came from Coach Wymack’s. Kevin frequently dropped by there before coming into Aaron’s apartment anyway.

“Did he make these bland or spicy?” Aaron asked as he sat down, pointing at the omelets.

Kevin scoffed from where he was hogging the only clean and safe mug in the apartment by the counter. “You’re just white, Aaron, those omelets are perfectly fine.”

“Yeah, so?”

“They’re bland. Nicky didn’t bring his whole spice rack over from Fox Tower. Enjoy.”

As a reply to that, Aaron shoveled almost half of the omelet into his mouth and stuck his tongue out, rolling his eyes when he heard Kevin mutter something along the lines of “ _Real mature, Minyard_.”

They continued their morning like that, with Kevin eventually relinquishing the only clean and safe mug and preparing Aaron some coffee, and Aaron finishing all the food Kevin brought up to his place and feeding some of it to Kevin himself.

While Aaron did the dishes, Kevin said, “So, you were drinking away until ten in the evening. Why?”

Aaron hated how perceptive Kevin was sometimes.

“Your best friend’s gonna stay here until New Year’s Eve. I was mourning the loss of my free time with you.”

Kevin huffed, “We’re not best friends.”

Aaron put down the plate he was cleaning and leaned a hip against the sink counter. He held his fingers up as he counted down, “Oh, so you don’t: know his deepest and darkest childhood secrets, have his number, call him regularly, _and_ call him by his nickname when everyone else calls him by his real name, including my thirsty and subtle brother?”

“You do that too,” Kevin pointed out. “Call him by his nickname, not the other parts. Man, don’t remind me that Andrew has a thing for him.”

“Neil gave me a name to call him, and I’m sticking with it because that’s what he wants me to call him,” Aaron pointed back. He gestured to his torso. “You know why that’s a basic principle for me. Plus, it’s his legal name now, remember?”

Kevin opened his mouth to protest, then closed it, a process that, Aaron mused, was akin to a goldfish. “Okay. Fair play.”

“Spoken like a true athlete.”

“Now you’re starting to sound like him.”

Aaron laughed as he pushed away from the sink, wiping his hands off the shirt he was wearing. “Take that back.”

Kevin crowded him up against the counter, his frown thoughtful. “Why are you so against him? You’ve worked with him before. Tabloids even say you’re dating.”

Aaron scoffed, “Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet, hon.”

“Aaron.”

Aaron sighed and rubbed at his eye, “Whatever.”

Kevin tried to catch his gaze, leaning from side to side to patch up the height difference. Aaron glanced up at him briefly, then grabbed the edges of his button-up shirt and hugged it around himself tighter.

“Have you been getting nightmares again?”

Yes. They never went away. Every other night, Aaron medicated himself or drank himself to sleep just to avoid the sound of a suppressed gun to his gut or the loud crack of a bedside lamp against the side of Drake’s head. Murder was one thing to consider, but how he did it seemed crucial to his mental health all until a few months ago.

Kevin took his hand, leaning down to be on eye level with Aaron. From another person, it would have felt condescending. On a normal day, it probably would have been, even if it was Kevin. Right now, Aaron was staring into the most concerned green eyes he’s ever known.

Aaron licked at his lips, then averted his eyes. “Yeah, I have. But that’s… I don’t dislike him because of that.” Not completely anyway. Aaron couldn’t hold their jobs against Neil, and he definitely couldn’t hold Drake’s murder to himself.

In the two to three hours they spent together on that mission last October, and in the weekend mission to kill Nathan, Aaron had a basic gist of who Neil was. He didn't know what Neil had growing up apart from the absent mother, the murderer for a father, and the mercenary occupation.

The guy had serious issues, and Aaron couldn't fault him for those either. It was just that... Neil felt too close to the issue. Maybe it was because it all started with them killing his father, but Neil was too close to everything: Andrew, Kevin, the Moriyamas.

Drake.

That train of thought was too complicated for Aaron. None of it made sense.

“Stop thinking.”

Aaron put his focus back in front of him, to the warmth of Kevin’s arms around him, the oddity that was Kevin’s mismatched socks when Aaron looked down, and his confusion about everything giving way for just the feeling of _this_.

“We have all day ‘til he gets here.” Kevin pressed his lips on the crown of Aaron’s head, soft like a promise. It was enough for the words they couldn’t say. “Until then, it’s just us.”

* * *

Nicky, when Neil finally got to Ms. Winfield’s house, was fast asleep on the couch, clutching at a bottle of cherry vodka so Neil didn’t get the rest of his energy sapped.

After thanking Ms. “ _Call me Abby, my mother is Ms. Winfield,”_ for the place to stay in for the week, Neil dropped his things by Nicky’s feet and made his way to the back porch where she said Kevin was.

Sitting alone in the quiet back porch, Kevin was wearing that godawful Trojans sweater Neil got him three years ago, looking buzzed and squinting at his phone. Neil settled down next to him, careful not to show that he was itching to hop into the shower and pass out on any soft surface he could get.

“Don’t sext your boy just yet, Day.”

Kevin turned to look at him, then glanced at his phone. He locked it and grinned, “You’re assuming I wasn’t already doing that before you got here?”

Neil hummed and nodded, resisting his own grin. “That’s smart. No one’s gonna catch you jerking it out here.”

Kevin socked him by the shoulder, so akin to Jean that Neil didn’t know who got it from who first. He should probably ask tomorrow morning.

Neil took in, instead, the contours of Kevin’s face, gaze glancing off the tattoo on his cheek as it usually does. He looked healthier, looked like he was still restless but less for the fact that he was used to sixteen-hour days and more to the fact of recent events.

His eyes caught on the bruise by the side of Kevin’s neck, and gave Kevin a sly grin. “He makes you real happy, huh?”

Kevin blinked. “Who?” He followed Neil’s gaze, then cupped at the side of his neck, rolling his eyes, turning his head to look out at the lawn.

Kevin’s buzz really threw him off, Neil supposed. One moment he was joking around, another he was deep in thought. “I caught up with Aaron at a frat party the first time I could head out on my own after… You know.”

He meant _after being used to having someone else follow me around_. Neil nodded. Tetsuji always did implement that buddy-buddy system, and seeing it manifest so toxically into his friends’ personalities made him anxious. Leaving Jean alone inside his dorm room for his own classes and assignments was a test of patience when they started rooming together.

He couldn’t possibly imagine how Andrew dealt with Kevin’s outlandish behavior: the sixteen-hour days, the constant practice, the need to be with someone at any given time.

Kevin continued. “A few years ago, I tried to recruit Andrew into the Ravens, and Aaron was there when I tried it so, that frat party was the first time we formally met outside the court. I allegedly said a bunch of ridiculous shit while drunk, but I can’t really remember much of it. We slept together,” he huffed, smiling at the memory, hand still cupping the side of his neck.

“I didn’t think it’d become a regular thing, or that I’d even get invested in it. In him. From the moment I got here, I convinced myself that I'd be absorbed in trying to work my way up, to getting better playing with my right hand. Then he asked, ‘If you broke both of your hands, what would you fall back on?’ and I couldn’t answer.

“He kind of rekindled my competitive streak and now, I guess, I have to answer that question. Minyards are intense, Neil. They pull you in like they’re both searching for something to hang onto, and the way they do it, you want to be there to keep them up.”

“That sounds unhealthy, Kevin.”

Kevin ran a hand through his hair. “Not like that. Just, I don’t know how to describe it. Aaron, he—he makes me want to be more than what I was. Be more than what I was doing. I want to be better for him, you know?”

Neil didn’t know. He nodded anyway. “So, you and Thea?”

“We were just fucking for the hell of it. I broke it off with her the moment I realized Aaron and I were going somewhere I couldn’t comprehend at that time. It was a mutual decision. She signed Court when this season started. Didn’t you check in?”

“Between all the assignments, meetings, and games? Fuck no,” Neil laughed. He gave Kevin a sidelong glance, trying to be nonchalant when he asked, “Oh, and how much do they know?”

Kevin looked at him, confused.

“The Minyards.”

Kevin brought his hands together in front of him, his fingers rubbing over his scars, his expression sobering. “The whole team had to know what they were signing up for if they signed me. Riko was all there was to it, at the time, but I think they got the memo this year that it’s way more than just… how did Gordon put it before he quit… ‘My foster brother digging shit up to scare me into coming back.’”

Neil laughed at that. It was definitely an apt and censored summary. Kevin sent him a dirty look, but Neil assumed it was because he was too close to all the incidents to take it as a laughing matter.

Kevin continued, “The Minyards are more… complicated. Andrew knows a lot about how the Ravens work because I tell him, so he’ll know what he’ll expect, or so he says. Aaron knows by extension, but he digs up as much info as he can about the main branch because he works for them.”

When the silence settled between them, Neil played with the edges of the letter by his side, then held his hand out in front of him, the letter caught between two fingers as he waved it towards Kevin. “So, what’s this about then? I’m not gonna pry, but if I’m guessing right, this letter is why you came to Palmetto after the incident. I’m pretty sure you owe me an explanation after I played pass the message between my two friends.”

Kevin put his phone aside and took it into his hands, somber and serious as he stared at it. “How’d you figure?”

“It’s the only thing Jean’s been unable to tell me so far.”

Neil observed Kevin as he thumbed at the yellowed edges of the paper, his mouth twitching to something unreadable.

“You don’t have to do it, Kev. If I’m way off, just make fun of me. I’m tired from my trip anyway, you know? Twenty-two hours in public transport? I’ll just—” He made to stand up, wincing at the creaking in his joints.

“Neil.”

Neil stopped. He stood over Kevin, leaning against the porch beam looking down.

“Riko’s not missing, is he? He’s dead and you killed him, didn’t you?”

Neil took a deep breath, then looked out across the lawn. He tried not to think about the words he’d said to Riko last, or the part where he’d bathed Riko’s bones in a vat of acid. No, not when Kevin said his name and brought up memories of summer afternoons spent playing Exy and laughing at the way Riko tried to sniff the blood streaming down from his nose back in, the times Neil actually enjoyed being the bane of Riko's existence and Riko didn't seem to mind.

He grew up with that boy.

After a beat, Neil answered, “Yes.”

Kevin took a deep breath and sighed loudly into the quiet night. He leaned back on his hands. “This letter says that Coach Wymack is my biological father. This was my mother’s last letter to—to Coach Moriyama before she… disappeared a few days afterwards.”

Neil’s breath hitched at that. There were no coincidences to the Moriyama’s involvement in this.

That and, there were certain facts and fictions stirring around the Nest, that Kevin was secretly Tetsuji’s child, that Kayleigh was the modern-day Virgin Mary. Tabloid headers that grew into ridiculously overboard conspiracy theories that sometimes even seemed plausible to some freshmen players in the Nest.

Who would have thought that the world-renowned Exy striker’s father would be the coach for the worst team in American collegiate Exy?

Neil tried not to laugh at the irony of it all: the sport Kevin's mother made brought glory to the uncle of the boy who brought Kevin to his knees all for the sake of trying to get noticed by his father, and had Kevin running to a father he never even knew.

Neil passed a hand over his face, feeling exhaustion washing over him in waves.

“You should probably head to bed,” Kevin said.

Neil was already complying, standing straight, and turning to head for the door, but he still managed to throw one more thing over his shoulder. “You’re only saying that because you want to jerk off to your boyfriend’s nudes.”

He chuckled at the sounds of indignation from behind the backdoor, making his way to his bag for his toiletries and pajamas.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> christmas break part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> brief nsfw down there! just a warning

There was a disorienting feeling to waking up after sleeping off jetlag. Spending the most of December in London for Yuletide celebrations with the Hatfords and his teammates was one thing, but having to do it with a restless twenty-two-hour travel time the next day was hell.

In London, it was eight in the morning. Neil knew this well because he had the times listed on his phone, but he knew it better because his body clock woke him up at five in the morning in South Carolina.

The room he was in was dark, but his phone lighting up from the fifth new message from Jean was enough to let Neil maneuver through his bag for something better than just his boxers and the shirt he got from his mother when he was fifteen.

He dropped back into bed when his sweats were on, straining to keep his phone connected to the charger as he looked through Jean’s texts and the photos he sent. He looked through his emails, international news sites, local news sites, checked his social media accounts; he stayed half-leaning out of the bed until the sun rose, his stomach started demanding food, and voices downstairs started going from hushed conversations to raising voices.

Neil unplugged his phone and slipped out of his room.

He was still getting over his vertigo when he finally processed the words coming from downstairs.

“Nicky, please, keep your voice down.”

“It’s fine, Abby, the murderer’s still probably asleep.”

“Can you stop calling him that?” came Kevin’s exasperated voice.

Neil crept down the stairs, sitting down the first step to eavesdrop.

From the sounds of it, Nicky wasn’t going to stop any time soon. Neil could definitely believe that this was how most mornings with a team as unruly as the Foxes went, but Nicky seemed to be one of Kevin’s closest teammates.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Kev, was that a slur? What’s another word for ‘murderer’? A serial killer? A homicidal asshole? What haven’t I called Aaron, I have to set them apart.”

Neil slid down the steps, slowly making his way down to the first floor the softest way he knew how when voices boomed inside the manor.

“Nicky. Don’t.”

“What, are you too chicken to say it? You know what he does for a living. He and Aaron both.”

“Yeah, I knew what Aaron was doing, and I knew what Neil was doing. It wasn’t easy. This is the first year I started really talking to Neil after he started killing for profit three years ago. But pinning them down to what they do isn’t fair for either of them.”

Nicky let out an indignant laugh, high and hysterical. Neil thought it was way too early for this much emotion. It was barely past six in the morning, and Abby wasn’t even done cooking breakfast yet.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? My cousins worked part-time jobs with me before this. I actually liked thinking we were raking in money the good way, you know, with less murder. The drugs were way better than this. I don’t even know him anymore, Kev. Aaron could easily have just paid for—”

“Just what?” Kevin was getting heated too. Fuck, what if he blew his cover? Neil reached the bottom step and stood slowly. “Could he have easily paid for his own tuition doing that? You _know_ he splurged what they had left from the insurance so they could both have the hormone replacement. What money was he going to pay his tuition with, Nicky?”

Nicky chuckled, bitter. Neil knew from what Kevin had told him that Nicky wasn’t the argumentative type of person. He was the nicest of his cousins’ lot. This was uncharacteristic of him, and he didn’t need to have known that to know that Kevin’s cautious silence between that laugh and the next words were genuine.

He had to put an end to this.

“I don’t know why you’re so on about his case or where you got all this from. You’re nothing to hi—”

Neil stepped into the kitchen, mustering his best tired smile. “Good morning, everyone.”

Abby waved a spatula in response, but she looked like she was waving him away rather than waving her response. A look of horror flashed through Kevin’s expression, and the only thing Neil could read on Nicky’s face was anger.

“There he is,” Nicky said.

Abby tried to intervene, killing the fire on the stove and putting the spatula down. “Nicky, stop.”

In German, Nicky said one word: “Leave.” It had enough conviction in it to make Neil want to stay out of pure spite. Kevin rubbed a hand through his face.

Neil thought, okay, it was only polite to respond in the same language. “I think we got off on the wrong foot here, Nicky. Hi, I’m—”

“A murderer. I’m familiar with the concept, related to it even. Get out, right now. Leave. I don’t want to have to live with another one of you freaks again.”

“Look, Hemmick,” Neil said in English, around the same time Kevin tried to cut in with a weak, “Nicky…”

“Shut it, both of you.”

Nicky held his hands up and dropped his hands, sitting down by the sink counter. Neil folded his arms, prepared to go on full bitch mode on this. He may have only gotten around five hours of sleep, but he was prepared to hear this.

“You,” Nicky pointed towards Kevin. “You knew all along what was happening with my cousins. You knew what Aaron was doing and you knew Andrew knew what Aaron was doing, and you didn’t even try to give me hints or something. I’m the guy who practically raised them, I have a right to know, so fuck you for not telling me anything.

“Now, I don’t care if this psycho,” he pointed at Neil, “is your friend or the guy you bump dickheads with sometimes. Fact of the matter is: I don’t want him anywhere near me. I have to celebrate the only non-tainted holiday I have left without speaking to any of my family members, and him being here is the biggest reminder you can give me. Literally a middle finger up. My. Ass. Now that he’s here, my holiday is ruined, because I’m not speaking to Aaron, Andrew was _never_ speaking to me, and I’m pretty sure my own parents are filing a restraining order against me. Me! All I did was do what they asked, brought my cousins over there, played the perfect son! And now _I_ have to stay away from _them_. I probably should have just flown back to Germany for Christmas, and never returned!”

“And _you_.” He glared at Neil this time. Abby sighed heavily before turning the stove back on, muttering something that sounded like _I don’t get paid enough for this_ under her breath. “You don’t get to talk. I know you _knew_ what was going to happen to me and my cousins in that house. I don’t know what possessed you to think that you could just sidle on up in our business or how the hell you got ahold of it, but instead of calling the fucking police, you called in a goddamn _cleaning crew_ —”

Alright, that’s it.

“Now hold on just a goddamn second there, Hemmick,” Neil cut in.

Kevin made cutting motions at his throat, telling Neil to shut up, but Neil was too tired for this shit. He was hungry, he was jetlagged, and he didn’t want to hear another word from this clown about how he was supposed to have handled something.

“No,” he said to Kevin. To Nicky, he said, “The way you’re acting right now is the exact fucking reason why neither Kevin nor your cousins wanted to tell you anything. You’re the eldest in the group and you’re acting like a goddamn twelve-year old that just found out that your best friends have been cheating on you by befriending someone else. Get your head out of your ass. They’re not entitled to tell you _anything_. And it’s not like this is the first time your parents kicked you out of their house. Now they just have the paper work to keep you out of their lives, so fucking deal with it.

“And, yeah, I didn’t send the police to your house. Because I knew that regardless of if they sent dispatch early, either one or both of your cousins would have ended up standing over his rotting corpse and walked away in handcuffs. If I had to tell you everything to make your hungover ass comprehend why or how I found out, I’d have to kill you. So yes, okay, it wasn’t any of my business to jump in and make decisions like that, and it’s none of my business to tell you how to present yourself as a sophisticated adult, but it is my business to keep my co-worker, your cousin, out of jail without having to bribe the police. So, you’re welcome, Hemmick, only one of your cousins isn’t here to celebrate Christmas with you. Happy fucking Holidays.”

“Are you boys done?” Abby cut in.

All three of them froze, then gave Abby a confused look. She held up a plate of pancakes and her spatula. “Breakfast is ready for the ones setting the table.”

Neil threw his hands up and went around the room to help set the table.

“No, don’t just walk away like that,” Nicky called out. Neil rolled his eyes.

“I’m not walking away from anything, I’m right here, I can hear you,” Neil threw back, not bothering to turn around and answer. Abby gave another sigh at this. When he got closer, he could smell that her coffee definitely had some alcohol in it. “I also want to eat breakfast, so if you don’t mind…”

“I mind. Finish this conversation.”

“Fuck you,” Neil said, trying to heft four plates in one pile to put on the table. Kevin stood to help him with two. In the corner of his eye, he saw that Nicky was not pleased with this arrangement.

Neil resisted a sigh as he turned back around to get forks from the drawers. Exy players definitely had pettiness in common.

Nicky snarled, “No, fuck _you_.”

There were sounds of stomping, then the door opening and slamming shut.

Kevin lowered the plates, looking down the hall and about ready to chase after Hemmick himself.

Abby said, “No, leave him be, Kevin. He’ll come back.”

Kevin sighed, putting the plates down on the table and sitting down on the chair. He already looked tired.

Neil huffed, helping Abby with the plate of finished pancakes. “Is this how you spend your mornings?”

Abby ignored him. Kevin threw him a glare.

Neil shrugged, walking over to put it down in the middle of the table. “I had to say something.”

“Yeah, you just _had to_ , didn’t you?”

“Hey, you know I was right.”

Kevin said, in French. “No, you were overstepping. You don’t know what they’ve been through, and no, it wasn’t any of our business to impose ourselves onto their situations. He’s been with them since their mother died, he has the right to be angry about this.”

Neil scoffed as he sat down across Kevin as Abby ate her piece by the counter, thoroughly ignoring them. It must have been daunting to have to deal with her Foxes’ drama so early in the morning, but Neil was more than happy to get involved to prove a point.

“You mean he has the right to know that his cousin was trying to keep him safe from his parents and to give Aaron the cold shoulder after he saved his brother? Yeah, right.”

Kevin leaned forward in his seat, eyes fierce with anger. It was the most spine he’s shown Neil within the past year and it was damn near exhilarating to see in front of him, if a little intimidating. “You weren’t there. All you had to do with it was a cleaning crew. You didn’t see what happened to Andrew, you didn’t see Aaron afterwards, and you didn’t see how Aaron dealt with them.”

Neil raised a brow at him. “He’s capable, I know he did his best.”

“He’s human. His capability means jack shit if the rest of it fucks him up,” Kevin argued. “If you think all of us have as little empathy as you do, you’re in way over your head. None of us killed our fathers in cold blood, Nathaniel. That’s just you.”

Neil stabbed a piece of his pancake, and plopped it into his mouth, unimpressed. When he could speak again, he said, “It’s Neil now.”

“Your name’s not gonna make a difference for your character. Leave the subject alone.”

“Fine.”

* * *

Kevin hiked Aaron’s knees around his shoulders, his heaving breaths making it difficult from keeping them from sliding over, what with how slippery Kevin’s back was with sweat. Kevin used his hands to keep Aaron’s hips down, and was just about to dive in when someone started knocking on the front door.

He froze, eyes flicking up to meet Aaron’s, quick to go from heady with arousal to full-on panic mode, so Aaron slipped off the couch since, of course, Kevin was much more naked than he was.

Aaron grabbed at Kevin’s shirt and tossed it over, then slipped into his cycling shorts, fixing his ruffled hair and shirt. He gestured to ask Kevin if he looked fine, but Kevin was too busy struggling with his own shirt.

Another three knocks, gradually getting louder. Then a shout of, “Aaron, it’s me,” muffled behind the door. “Open the door, please, I need to speak with you.”

Kevin’s head popped out from the shirt. He met Aaron’s eyes and jutted his chin towards the door. Aaron pointed to the bedroom, then trekked down to the front door, not checking to see if Kevin has successfully relocated.

If Aaron hadn’t seen the beer can in Nicky’s hand first, the stench that hit him upon the door opening would’ve been an apt indicator of Nicky’s lack of sobriety. He looked exhausted, was possibly wearing old clothes, and had something white in front of his shirt.

Had he been at Sweetie’s before this? Did he take the bus?

Nicky slumped against the doorway, pouting. “Aaron…”

“Nicky. I thought you weren’t speaking to me.”

Very loudly, Nicky proclaimed, “I’m sorry for being so unfair about you murdering people fo—”

Aaron reached out to slap a hand over Nicky’s mouth, then remembered, horrifyingly, where it’s been. He retracted his hand, quick, then grabbed at the doorknob. “Fucking broadcast it to the world, why don’t you? I get it. Apology accepted.”

Nicky made a face, then licked at his lips. Aaron tried not to feel like he was slowly dying inside as he watched Nicky do this.

Drunk, Nicky didn’t seem to want to comment on the taste or smell. Instead, he opened his mouth again and said, “I wanna visit Andrew at Easthaven.”

Aaron blinked at that, somewhat speechless. He opened his mouth to say something, regardless. “Well that’s… I don’t think he would want that but yeah. Okay, let’s. I can’t do it tomorrow though.”

Nicky scoffed, “It’s Christmas Eve tomorrow.”

“I have a job.”

“Lame. Fine. Christmas. This better not be some lame excuse because you forgot to buy us gifts.”

Aaron gave Nicky a look.

Nicky took that look, had a moment of complete blankness in his expression before it transformed into something that Aaron had long grown used to. Nicky cooed, then seemed to automatically procure tears on hand. Aaron really did wish Nicky was less of an emotional drunk. “You remembered to buy us gifts even though I—even though Andrew’s not here? Even though I said I wasn’t going to—”

Aaron made a face but let himself be buried into the hug that Nicky gave him, even added a few awkward pats before pushing away.

How could one man have so many feelings?

Nicky sniffled, wiping away tears. “I’m a mess, Aaron Michael. I might need to crash here.”

Aaron stood up straight, then shook his head. “Nope, not tonight. Uh. I have, um, a friend over to help with my thing tomorrow.”

“I thought Neil was at Abby’s? He’s here?”

Aaron shook his head. “Sure. Um, that’s exactly where I was going with this. We’re… planning shit.”

Nicky blinked down at him blankly. Then his eyes went comically wide. Conspiratorially, he whispered, “You’re sleeping together?!”

Aaron made a face at that. “What? No! Just—go crash at Coach Wymack’s for the night.”

Nicky nodded sagely and let himself be pushed away by Aaron, going limp where Aaron was swatting at his arm. “I get it, Aaron, it’s okay. I don’t judge. I once slept with a co-worker.”

“Nicky, I am not sleeping with Neil. Go away.”

“Good night, Neil! Have fun, stay safe! Use condoms or whatever...”

Aaron glared after his cousin, then slammed the door shut and locked it behind him.

He shoved his shorts off and tossed them on the couch, trudging into his bedroom.

Kevin sat on his bed, naked from the ass down, still rock fucking solid, and looking at what was possibly Exy stats. Aaron crawled onto the bed and grabbed the phone out of his hand.

“What did Nicky want?”

Aaron pushed him to lie down. “Nope, not talking about it. You’re eating me out right now, then you’re gonna fuck that entire conversation directly out of my head.”

Kevin sighed as Aaron straddled his face, bracing his hands on Aaron's thighs for the second time that evening. “Seems legit.”

* * *

 Once they were all settled into the GS, Aaron was quick to flick a look towards Neil through the rearview mirror and ask, “Why is Neil coming with?”

Aaron didn’t like the way Nicky teasingly said, “Why not,” around the same time Kevin said, “He has nothing to do.”

Aaron gave Nicky a look from where he sat in the passenger seat. He supposed it was a relief Kevin wasn’t sitting shotgun, because he couldn’t channel enough of his brother’s intimidation tactics to keep Nicky from making Neil uncomfortable enough for violence in the back seat.

(For a guy who gave him the cold shoulder for weeks for the prospect of murdering someone for money, Nicky seemed keen on mooching up on an actual murderer.)

Neil spoke up. “I didn’t want to be left alone with Abby. I could just stay in the parking lot, or you guys could drop me off somewhere while you deal with Andrew. I don’t mind, I can call a cab.”

“That’s nonsense, Neil,” Nicky said, his tone chipper. Neil looked bemusedly at him in his seat but kept quiet.

Aaron sighed, then glanced at Kevin in the rearview mirror, lightning fast, but long enough to have been caught by Neil, who looked a second away from teasing.

Aaron said, “Yeah, okay, you’re coming with. If Andrew’s gonna get the surprise drop-in, why not bring him all the guest stars, right?”

Neil snorted at that.

The drive to Easthaven wasn’t as tense as Aaron had expected it to be. Neither Neil nor Kevin knew what was up with Nicky’s new behavior, and Aaron didn’t want to abrupt the balance for now, not within Nicky’s hearing range.

He dropped them off at the entrance, since the parking was behind the building and in the basement. Nicky was tasked to checking in at the nurse’s station and though both Kevin and Neil wanted to stay in the car, Aaron didn’t move until they both got out of the car.

He just hoped Nicky didn’t fuck things up before he could muster up the courage to do this.

Once he was parked, he went up a few sets of stairs until he had two bars of signal and dialed Kevin’s number.

“ _Hey, did you get lost parking?_ ” was Kevin’s teasing remark.

“Har har, babe. Meet me by the stairs, I have to tell you something. Pretend you can’t hear me and when someone asks tell them I need someone to get me inside.”

With that guaranteed to take Kevin some time, Aaron ran up the steps until he got out of the basement area. He made it just in time to see Kevin turning the corner.

“What’s up?”

Aaron grabbed Kevin by the front of his shirt, then looked down the hall behind him to check if either Nicky or Neil followed. “I’m going to tell them today.”

Kevin blinked. “About wha—you mean about _us_?”

Aaron nodded. “It’s been a good few months and we’re pushing through it. Andrew has another week here so he can stew in it once I tell them and Nicky kind of thinks I’m snogging Neil so I have to say it before… I don’t know, before Andrew thinks I _am_ snogging Neil.”

“No one says that.”

“Shut up. Are you in this or not?”

Kevin blinked. “In this? I thought you were just telling me so I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Aaron huffed, pushing a bit at Kevin’s front. “Don’t be a smartass. This is our relationship. Both of us have a say in it.”

“Yeah, but what you say to them about us isn’t my business. They’re your family.”

Aaron looked up at him, wondering if Kevin understood that the moment Andrew took him in, he was part of this too. “Did you not hear what I just said?”

Kevin shrugged. “If it won’t affect my season, it won’t affect my life.”

Aaron raised a brow at him. “You dorm with both of them, and you severely underestimate how much pettiness drives Andrew to do things. He turned down your offer to the Ravens years ago out of spite. All I need’s a yes or a no, Kevin. Are you going to be okay if I tell them or not?”

Kevin bit his lip in thought. Aaron reached up to pry it away with gentle fingers, then patted Kevin by the cheek.

“You’re right,” Kevin said.

“Of course I am.”

Kevin chuckled softly, bumping Aaron with an arm. “I’ll be fine with it. Also, that snogging thing makes sense now. I was wondering why Nicky suddenly got all chummy the morning after that breakdown in the kitchen.”

“The what now?”

Kevin looked behind him, then started pulling Aaron down the hall towards the visiting area. “I’ll tell you all about it some other time. We need to get back there before Andrew sends Nicky after us and starts _snogging_ Neil while they’re alone.”

“Gross. Fuck you.”

Kevin snorted.

* * *

Nicky stood to ask a nurse where the restroom was, leaving Neil with Andrew.

Kevin had disappeared to find Aaron just a few minutes ago in some fake phone conversation they were having.

“So, what do you think Kevin and Aaron are planning?” Neil asked, if only to clear the silence. Andrew hadn’t said a single word since his beginning words of _What happened while I was gone_.

So far, Nicky had told Andrew what had happened in the winter banquet, where Tetsuji had announced a toast for Riko’s disappearance, ‘ _and others as well_ ,’ or so Neil remembered. That was all the news Nicky had given before he gave in and said he had to take a piss. He didn’t seem to have been planning on telling Andrew about the kitchen debacle, so Neil didn’t try to ‘impose on the situation’ and changed the subject on Andrew.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Andrew replied.

Neil huffed, only slightly relieved to have gotten a response out of Andrew. “That was obviously a faked one-sided conversation.”

Andrew raised a brow at him. Neil shrugged. The subject was dropped.

“You did something to Riko,” Andrew stated.

Neil blinked. He wasn’t completely surprised about Andrew bringing it up. Riko’s disappearance was an apt conversation topic between them. Neil loved talking about it to people intelligent enough to know how little he ‘grieved over the loss of his teammate.’ Except, of course, the fact that Riko's death was directly related to Andrew's admission to Easthaven.

But still, it was nice to have someone call him out on something obvious, even though he was curious on as to how Andrew got to the conclusion. So, he asked. He gave Andrew what could only feel like a smug look. “How’d you figure?”

“I know how your business goes. Missing may as well be as good as dead.”

“Touché,” Neil quipped. “But: insufficient evidence, Mr. Minyard.”

Andrew leaned back in his seat, purposefully mirroring Neil’s slack posture. “I keep up with the news, Mr. _Josten_. It’s really quite daunting. I also heard your name being thrown around the room before I left the Hemmicks. You, Riko, and Drake were involved in this somehow, and then suddenly Riko’s out of the picture. I don’t need to give you evidence, Josten. The mob doesn’t work that way.”

Neil switched to German. “I sent a cleaning crew beforehand to ensure no one got arrested, but yes, I was aware of how involved he was to your situation in Columbia. Drake was exactly the reason why he had to disappear.”

Andrew nodded at that. Along with the pause between statements, the subject dropped again.

Then, Andrew said, “Neil’s an honest fit for you.”

That was the first time the word _honest_ was used on him so genuinely, and the fact that Andrew said it so emotionlessly and suddenly made Neil laugh. “I suppose so. You would know a lot about changing names, wouldn’t you?”

Andrew raised a brow at him. Neil shrugged. “I’ve seen your records in the office before. Tetsuji doesn’t like throwing out talent, no matter if they switch teams. You were a Doe, right?”

When Andrew blinked at that, Neil realized just how long they’ve been looking each other in the eye throughout this conversation. Neil averted his eyes for a moment, before glancing back.

Andrew kept staring. “I was an Erin Doe before I was an Andrew Doe, but close enough.”

Neil considered that, thinking for a moment that Andrew was saying he was named Aaron before, but then realized that Andrew was saying he was _Erin_ before he was Andrew.

He nodded. He did remember Kevin saying something about hormone replacement the other day.

Andrew said, “I’m trans.”

“Yeah, I just got that,” Neil replied.

Nicky announced his presence by startling Neil via his hip to the arm of the couch Neil was sitting on. “ _Shit_ ,” he hissed, rubbing slowly. “Hey, I’m back. What were you two talking about?”

Neither of them bothered to answer, and Nicky didn’t seem to mind because he followed that with, “So I found Kevin and Aaron on the way back.”

* * *

“ _Marcus offered to pay for my plane tickets when I got back from England. He wanted me to meet his family in Louisiana._ ”

Neil hummed, handing his phone to Kevin as he turned around to tie his shoelaces. They’ve been on the phone with Jean for around ten minutes now, and so far, all Jean’s done was talk excitedly about how his Christmas break went. It was the first time in a long time Kevin’s heard him so relaxed and happy about something.

Kevin snorted. “Meet his family—what, does that Marcus guy like you or something?”

“ _Oh, wouldn’t you know, Mr._ Minyard-Day _?_ ”

Neil snorted as he snatched the phone from Kevin’s hand. “I doubt he’d hyphenate, but I don’t think Aaron would appreciate being a Dr. Aaron Day either. How does Kevin Minyard sound?”

Kevin punched him by the shoulder, thankful for his complexion that Neil didn’t tease him about flushing down to his neck.

“Fuck,” Neil huffed, cradling his arm in mock-pain. Kevin knew how large his pain tolerance really was. “Which one of you two idiots made up that shoulder punching thing again?”

Kevin answered at the same time Jean did. “Riko.”

Neil rolled his eyes. “Makes sense why I’m the only one getting punched then.”

 _Karma’s a bitch_ , Kevin thought. It wasn’t that Riko didn’t have his assassination coming, it was that Neil didn’t regret anything.

Kevin took a deep breath and sighed, looking anxiously towards the staircases. When were they gonna finish up with their chat with Andrew?

Kevin resisted biting at his bottom lip again. When he looked back at Neil, Neil was looking his way, his expression sleazy.

He held a fist up, and Neil held his hands up in defense, laughing.

Jean, who didn’t see any of their shenanigans, had to ask. “ _What, what is it?_ ”

“Don’t answer that, Neil.”

“ _Oh, so it’s about Aaron again... Kevin, are you sure this isn’t distracting you from your game? The Master wouldn’t have liked you to be this invested in something else._ ”

Kevin rolled his eyes, “I don’t have to date Exy too. I’m not just my racquet, okay? I’m working on learning that better.”

Neil made a noise between elation and teasing that made Kevin reconsider not punching him on the shoulder for the second time. “I take back my thoughts of the Minyards being a bad influence. This trumps your alcoholism. You’re all grown up, I’m so proud.”

“ _He’s still older than you, Neil_.”

Kevin glanced back towards the staircase, but startled when he saw Nicky approaching him, fast.

“Kevin Day, you _sneaky bastard_!” Nicky shouted, which meant Aaron got through about his plans. Kevin wished it just didn’t involve the amount of jostling Nicky was putting him through. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Knock it off,” Aaron said, swatting his cousin away. Kevin felt a hand at the small of his back and, ultimately, relaxed.

Neil smiled their way, then said, “I get dibs on best man, Kevin.”

This time, it was Aaron who stepped forward to punch Neil on the shoulder.


	11. Chapter 11

 

Neil tried not to groan out loud as the PA recited the tag on his plane tickets, telling him that his flight will be delayed for a few more minutes, and that they were sorry for the inconvenience.

He clenched his hands into fists on his lap, then let go, feeling his knuckles sting. A part of him is glad that, at the very least, stinging knuckles was what all Jackson left him after a scuffle. He might have gotten off with a gunshot wound or a sprained limb.

He was grateful that he remembered to bring earplugs and a suppressor to end it all.

He closed his eyes and hoped he could make it to his dorm by morning.

The seat behind him creaked as it admitted a new person. Neil had to make a conscious effort not to open his eyes and look.

“Don’t you have class?”

Neil opened his eyes, then looked to his left.

He supposed he should have anticipated this, considering he took the same trip they were having a game in on the only day he was free, but he didn’t mean to feel so startled when he saw Andrew Minyard on the seat behind him, clad in his team hoodie, head propped up on crossed arms on the seatback beside Neil, looking up at the TV screen propped up by the post nearest to their seats. His surprise didn't last long, not with the bored look on Andrew's face.

“I’m not scheduled for Friday classes and I had something to settle here.”

Andrew glanced at him. “Someone fixing to skip borders?”

Neil huffed at the expression, thinking maybe he caught it from Nicky. “You can say that. Hey, did you know Austin airports air the local college team’s Exy games? I used to think Texans just did it for football. Or basketball. I don’t really know.”

Andrew didn’t answer.

“Good game, by the way, but that was over an hour ago, how come you guys are still here?”

This time, Andrew said, “Flight got delayed.”

Neil winced in sympathy, turning his head to consider Andrew, who didn’t look like he played a full game, not even a little sore. “Austin flights, huh?”

Andrew shrugged, face impassive. Neil surmised that it was a Minyard’s default face.

“You’ve never been to Austin before this?”

Andrew glanced at him briefly, then went back to looking at the screen. “Struck out early last season. Even semi-finals were a stretch before Kevin.”

“You don’t need to play a game to go to a different state.”

“Check your privilege. You live out of someone else’s trust fund.”

Neil laughed at that. “Touché, again. But really, it’s simple. All you need’s a car, a change of clothes, and enough money to outlast you. Pick a direction and drive, you know?”

“Didn’t take you for a hipster,” Andrew said.

Neil rolled his eyes. Andrew glanced at him again, and Neil finally realized that Andrew was acting odd.

When he came along to visit at Easthaven, Andrew’s gaze was intense, unwavering. It would have been unsettling on any other man, but from Andrew, it felt less like a threat and more like a challenge.

Right now, he seemed like he could barely look at Neil for more than a few seconds. Maybe that was a tell that Andrew was exhausted. Either way, Neil made sure not to mention it.

“Did you get the gift I left you?” Neil asked, only a little curious if Aaron had pulled through on giving his threat of throwing his gift away.

Andrew leaned back in his position and fished a packet of cigarettes out of his hoodie pocket, already half-empty. Neil raised a brow at them, not planning to ask Andrew if he liked it but kind of surprised Andrew hadn’t already smoked all of them already.

Andrew caught the look, and said, “Your taste is impeccably terrible.”

Neil grinned. “If you gave it adjectives, that means something. Those were my first taste to ‘slow burn cancer.’”

Andrew’s lip lifted into a slight sneer, the first expression apart from judgement that Neil’s seen from him after rehab. “These might give me cancer faster.”

“Keep smoking and they will.”

That was followed by another silence, a comfortable enough one that Neil actually considered taking a quick nap again. Beside him, Andrew shifted in his seat, legs swinging from side to side.

When Neil gave him a sideway glance, and he stilled.

“Do you need to take a whizz?” Neil said.

Andrew gave him an unimpressed look. “I’m not five, I can handle it.”

“Right, because five year olds can hold their piss in.”

“I did.”

“God, just go. Do you want me to come with you or something?”

“No,” Andrew said firmly. Neil sighed.

The PA started announcing tags again, for planes that had arrived this time. Neil kept his eyes on his ticket, then felt a wave of relief wash over him as his plane number got announced. He could already feel himself crashing down in his bed, unpacking be damned.

As he stood and gathered his things, he gave Andrew one last look. Andrew didn't return the sentiment, but Neil was fine with taking in his soft-looking jacket and black skinny jeans and army boots look.

“Here’s a deal,” he said. “If you guys win Championships, I’ll go road tripping with you.”

Andrew blinked up at him.

Neil thought about what he just blurted out then scoffed, shouldering on his duffel. “Forget it, it’s weird.”

“Foxes won’t reach Championships,” Andrew said.

Neil paused, then turned to look at Andrew one last time. That wasn't a no.

With conviction, he said, “You will. And if—okay, _when_ you win, I’m gonna have to take you up on that offer again.”

Andrew didn’t bother with a response, didn’t even wave Neil goodbye. Neither did Neil.

* * *

 

“You missed a cone, Miller. Teodoro, spot for him,” Jean said as he checked his players off the list.

Neil pushed the clipboard in Jean’s hands down to see over the stats, then looked over the team.

“Rina, Hiro, and Sam, pick your back liners and a goalie to play with and do not stop until you get at least three goals each. I know you guys have been pushed harder before, but I know most of you are subs and never really got to play for even a full half. I don’t think I should explain why we’re pushing the offense right now, but defense players, play nice. The rest of you, cool down properly and shower.” He clapped his hands, loud, urging his players to go.

The team dispersed, leaving Neil and Jean standing by the center line. Jean was still looking down at the clipboard, feeling odd that not a single Moriyama was here to oversee practice. Their players were good, Neil was respected as their team captain, but their coordination and strategy was sloppy.

It was starting to make him think that they might just lose this year, and the thought of what came after that made him anxious. They were down to twenty-one players and the half of what was left were inexperienced with who they were playing with. They didn’t need more drills or three-on-three plays. They needed more… what was the word for it?

He looked down at Neil, his mouth drawn to a thin line. “We need to have them play together.”

“Teamwork,” Neil told him, a knowing look on his face. Jean nodded, then took a deep breath, rolling his shoulders back.

Neil observed the movement, put a hand on the small of his back, then said, “You should cool down too. Go on, outer court. I’ll see this over.”

“I can stay here, I’m fine,” Jean replied, pushing back against Neil’s touch.

Neil made a disapproving noise, “Nope, can’t pull that shit on me, it’s hypocritical. Cool down, vice-captain, and let me be in charge for once, it’s a weekday.”

Jean passed a hand over his face, then, in French, said, “Are you sure no one’s going to call you away?”

Neil sighed. “I can’t guarantee you that, Jean, I’m trying my best. The higher-ups are getting more and more hectic, and now with Lord Moriyama hospitalized, it’s getting worse. He’s rushing a lot of his men to tie up loose ends, Ichirou too, so I can’t just drop out of that in favor of practice.”

“See? That’s why I can’t—”

Neil stopped him with a firm, “Jean.”

Jean stopped pushing back, Neil stopped pushing away. They stood there, captain and vice-captain, friends, just looking at each other.

“It doesn’t matter if we win or lose Championships,” Neil said. “Remember what Kevin said? You’re not just your Exy racquet. You have a life outside of this.”

“You were never sold into this by your parents,” Jean retorted.

Neil fumbled at that, a range of emotions going through his face, not one of them intentional. Jean hated the thrill that ran through him at the sight of it, the mere thought of Neil being unable to get a grip of his situation.

At the home court, Rina and the others started their scrimmage, drowning out the awkward silence that erupted between them. Jean blinked away whatever stinging he felt at the back of his eyelids to observe it from afar.

“I could help you,” Neil said in a voice barely heard over the sound of the buzzer going off.

Jean sighed heavily, “I know you did not just suggest that.”

“What?”

“I don’t want you to get me out of this,” he answered firmly, turning to glare down at Neil. “I want me to get me out of this. That’s all I’ve wanted. Being sold wasn’t my choice, playing Exy wasn’t my choice. You, befriending you was barely a choice to me.”

Neil threw his hands up, looking angered. Part of Jean realized that what he just said may have shifted something around the peace they had between them, but it was too late now.

Neil started talking rapidly. “How the fuck are you gonna get out then, huh? You’re not even a human to them, Jean. They barely know your first name, much less your face. To Kengo, you’re just ‘ _the white child_ ,’ and even I couldn’t handle hearing that from him. I’m not saying I’m going to buy you off from their charge, I’m saying I can shift shit around so everything’s in favor of you doing things on your own.”

Jean wasn’t stupid, only one option counted for that, but he was tired, Miller was still missing his marks from over on the away court, and bringing this subject up was a mistake. So, he stared Neil down, and said, “Drop the subject.”

Neil opened his mouth to say something, but the buzzer sounded again, and Jean held a hand up.

He said, “I’m not going to talk to you about this, Neil.”

This time, Jean obliged Neil’s earlier requests and stormed off to cool down.

* * *

It was a Saturday morning in Columbia when Kevin woke to the sound of his phone ringing. Aaron stirred on the bed beside him, probably awake but not willing to open his eyes just yet. Aaron’s bed wasn’t big enough for them both, so it was easy for Kevin to slip off and grab his phone from the bedside table to take the call across the room.

His bones felt sore, and the light coming in from the peaks between Aaron’s blackout curtains. Kevin winced, clearing his throat as he grabbed the edges of the curtains to close them off completely. He squinted at his phone screen and saw Jean’s name.

“Hello?”

“ _Kevin, what did you tell Coach Rhemann?_ ”

Kevin squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing at his eyelid, and feeling something fall over his cheek at the action. He let out a yawn, then said, “I didn’t tell him anything. I gave Jeremy your number and said your options were open but, other than that, nothin’.”

“ _Did Neil put you up to that?_ ”

Kevin sniffed, then glanced over to the bed. Aaron was blinking up at him, face impassive. Kevin gave him a small wave. “No. He called to congratulate me last night, but he didn’t mention you. Not even the week before. Why, are you guys fighting?”

Jean sighed. “ _Kind of. I’d rather not talk about it._ ”

“Jean, I won’t judge you for it.”

“ _I know. It’s just… he offered to take me off the Moriyama’s tabs, you know, and I don’t… I want to leave, but I want to do it my way._ ”

Kevin hummed, walking back over to the bed when Aaron extended a hand out to him. He sat down by the edge, letting Aaron curl an arm around his waist. “I know what you mean.”

Jean was silent on the other line at that. Kevin draped his arm over Aaron’s back, stroking as he listened to Jean think this call through.

“ _Coach Rhemann is asking when he can speak to the Master,_ ” Jean said. “ _Says he wants to see if he can swindle the Master into transferring me over to the Trojans_.”

Kevin couldn’t help the smile on his face, and he didn’t know if it was because of Aaron pressing little kisses by his hipbone or if it was because Jean was finally getting an option he deserved. “That’s good, Jean. Are you thinking about telling the— I mean, Coach Moriyama?”

There was shifting on the other line, then, “ _I’m scared he’ll turn it down._ ”

Kevin switched his phone over to his right hand, reaching back to comb his fingers through Aaron’s hair. “Don’t let that decide for you. All you’re doing is getting them in contact. It’s not going to reflect back to you, I swear.”

“ _Was that what happened to your father and the Master?_ ”

Kevin stilled, then forced himself to breathe again. He reminded himself that the fact was out there now: that his father was Coach David Vincent Wymack, and that he wasn’t the only one who knew about it.

“Yeah, Jean. It’ll be fine. If he starts thinking about it, just offer to coach some Ravens for a few summers after he transfers you. That’s what got through him when I did it, fracture aside, didn’t even call to tell me if I was going to coach or not. Other than that, it’s down to what Coach Rhemann and the board over at USC manage to persuade him with.”

“ _Right_ ,” Jean said after a while. “ _I’ll try later at practice. Thank you, Kevin_.”

“It’s fine. Good luck with Penn State. See you at Championships.”

“ _See you_.”

Kevin hung up, his left hand still stroking through Aaron’s hair. “Hey. Did I wake you up?”

Aaron shook his head, eyes closed. He asked, “You think Nicky and Andrew are awake?”

Kevin huffed out a laugh. “C’mon, I’ll cook you breakfast.”

Aaron pressed one last kiss to his hipbone, then moved to get up. “You know me so well.”

* * *

 It was a bit odd to see Neil pop into the viewing area in a suit after having been in full gear earlier, but it was a relief to finally have someone by his side that could shut clients up with a look.

Ichirou had been getting condolences all evening, and he did not want to deal with any of that right now. Some of them were suck-ups, some of them were genuine, but most of them were unwanted. Ichirou was here for business, not for personal matters, never mind that business and personal life met when the person holding his position last was his father.

As Neil walked into the viewing area a bit late, gaze cold as it swept over the room, conversations died down a little. He didn’t look the least bit sore from getting subbed out because a striker hit him hard enough to knock him on ass. He at least got a punch in to knock the striker back on his ass after getting up, but by then, the referees were already walking him out of the court so they couldn’t card him for it.

It made sense, Ichirou thought, to have Neil keep this up. If he showed their clients what kind of brutality Neil was capable of without firearms, it was a split chance on which client would respect that, and which client would think that Neil was nothing but reckless brute who’s probably had six concussions since he was twelve.

Neil took his seat by Ichirou’s side, not bothering to greet their clients. They each had a role to play, and if the pragmatic silence was Ichirou’s, the calculated arrogance was Neil’s.

The meeting went accordingly as soon as Ichirou signaled for it to continue. The Beltrán-Leyva representative reported on the shared profits on her cartels, the Karimi representative reported on the money they required for resources they had to share with Middle Eastern allies. Stuart Hatford gave information about MI6 chatter on members of certain groups.

Neil reported that the last of his father’s faction was dead, and that Jackson’s body would probably be found floating off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in a few days prior, if he’d estimated correctly. Ichirou assumed that last bit was for whomever was thinking of trying to start a coup again. Though the Wesninski empire had reached its end, some of Nathan’s and Mary’s loyalists kept their ties with Neil, and most of them seemed sleazy now.

The meeting ended early. In the background, the Ravens won against Penn State. In the crowd, Ichirou spotted a few banners with his brother’s name and face on them.

Some legacies lived on, he supposed, as his clients excused themselves out of the meeting room, calling him by his father’s title.

* * *

 The moment Kevin had the ball in his racquet, even if Neil was in front of him and Jean was on his way, he knew the game was over. So when the buzzer sounded out, Neil was already celebrating for Kevin.

Neil threw his racquet on the floor and roared as he tackled Kevin.

When he got up, there were concerned referees flocking them. Kevin was too busy looking up at the scoreboards to bother waving them away. Jean was on it, telling the referees, “He’s celebrating. This isn’t a fight. Neil, calm down.”

Streamers were released, orange and white floating down. The Foxes started shouting and tackling each other.

Neil grabbed Kevin’s left hand and thrust it up in the air, shouting, “The greatest striker in the world, everyone! This man right here! One of my best friends!”

Kevin snatched his hand back, then hit Neil in the back of the helmet. “You lost. Shut up and grieve over it, asshole. Don’t celebrate with the Foxes.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

The Foxes started gathering. Nicky managed to pull a few of the Ravens in on the celebration, not at all caring about the fact that a few of them had tried to drag Kevin back on their first banquet. Boyd, Walker, and Wilds ran up to celebrate, and even pulled Jean in for the group hug. Smalls and Reynolds ran out of the benches, and so did their cheerleaders.

Neil stood back as, one by one, a few of his own teammates got dragged into the celebration.

The Foxes knew how to throw down a party out of thin air. Kevin literally had no choice but to celebrate with his new team and old team simultaneously. Too many of the Ravens were his fans too, and seeing their captain and vice-captain celebrating the occasion might have pushed them to follow suit.

Neil pulled the abandoned racquets out of the way from the growing crowd, then ducked out before Marcus could elbow him in the face. One of the Foxes started a singalong with the drumline they brought over, and the noise escalated the moment the court doors opened for the championship trophy and the people the Foxes invited.

Neil walked past the mess, spotting Andrew still standing in the goal. In the corner of his eye, he could spot Aaron still at the viewing area, just watching the chaos happen on court just like his brother did in the goal post.

Neil jogged away from the party, taking his helmet off as he went. Once he was within earshot, he said, “So, I owe you that road trip.”

Andrew turned his head to look at him, then slowly started to pry his helmet off. His hair curled with the sweat that came with having a helmet on for too long, and Neil couldn’t help but find it somewhat endearing: a contrasting softness to Andrew’s sharp gaze.

“You don’t owe me jack shit,” Andrew replied. “The deal was that you’d take me up on the offer. I hadn’t agreed to anything.”

Neil snorted, glancing over to where he saw Aaron last, but then he was gone. Probably where Kevin was inching slowly towards the court doors. “Minyards really drive a hard bargain.”

“Maybe you’re just talking to the wrong Minyard.”

Neil made a face at that. “No, Aaron once said the exact same thing to me. You both have it out for my head. Also, if I asked Aaron on a road trip, he’d poison my next meal, so I’m not taking any chances.”

“So, you’re chancing out on me because I’m the non-murderous twin?”

“No, I’m chancing out on you because I wanna take you on a road trip.”

“You know,” Andrew said, his voice almost expressive. “I once murdered my mother in a car wreck.”

That startled a laugh out of Neil. “Yeah, I probably should have thought to ask if you’ve committed vehicular manslaughter before I asked you to go on a road trip. I guess I can’t take it back now.”

Andrew looked at him, head on, and it was like they were back in Easthaven again. “I still haven’t agreed to anything, Josten.”

The way Andrew said his new name made it sound real, made Neil feel real. This was happening.

Out of context, it was like he was asking Andrew out on a date. A week-long date across a few states.

Maybe that actually was the context.

Neil didn’t know.

Neil shrugged, running a gloved hand over his hair, dislodging, the bandana that kept his hair out of the way. His hair flopped into his eyes, so he pushed it away with a hand and huffed out a laugh at Andrew’s unimpressed look.

“I guess I have the whole spring break to convince you,” Neil said.

Andrew’s expression sobered a little, which was one way of saying he stilled while not moving. He started shaking his head, making Neil chuckle and nod.

“I’m spending spring break with Kevin, you don’t have a choice.”

Andrew sighed. “Great, I have to murder again. I thought my streak was over.”

“Why stop? Make a job out of it.”

“I’ve seen your life, no thanks.”

Neil laughed, then glanced back to the party on-court. Kevin was halfway out the court doors, but nearly everyone was still on the court. Aaron had found Nicky and a tall man making out in a corner and currently looked like he was telling them to stop.

“We should be with our teams,” Neil said, offhand, but then Andrew was already ahead of him, walking at a quicker pace.

When they reached the hall after squeezing through over a dozen sweaty people, Neil sent Andrew a parting, “Make plans for that road trip this spring break, Minyard.”

Andrew flipped him off, not pausing as he walked down the hall.

Neil thought, _He didn’t say no_.

**Author's Note:**

> updates every three days, folks!
> 
> you can find me at [@stubbornjerk](http://stubbornjerk.tumblr.com) or [@aceaaroniscanon](http://aceaaroniscanon.tumblr.com)!!
> 
> comments/kudos are appreciated!!!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [makes me feel better (makes me satisfied)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11225001) by [aceaaronminyard (necklace)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/necklace/pseuds/aceaaronminyard), [autisticandrewminyard (transtwinyards)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/transtwinyards/pseuds/autisticandrewminyard)




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